"Through clever and constant application of propaganda people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the

other way around, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise." Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, 1923 The right to have children should be a marketable commodity, bought and traded by individuals but absolutely limited by the state. Kenneth Boulding, originator of the Spaceship Earth concept (as quoted by William Tucker in Progress and Privilege, 1982) We have wished, we ecofreaks, for a disaster or for a social change to come and bomb us into Stone Age, where we might live like Indians in our valley, with our localism, our appropriate technology, our gardens, our homemade religionguilt-free at last! Stewart Brand (writing in the Whole Earth Catalogue). Free Enterprise really means rich people get richer. They have the freedom to exploit and psychologically rape their fellow human beings in the process. Capitalism is destroying the earth. Helen Caldicott, Union of Concerned Scientists We must make this an insecure and inhospitable place for capitalists and their projects. We must reclaim the roads and plowed land, halt dam construction, tear down existing dams, free shackled rivers and return to wilderness millions of tens of millions of acres of presently settled land. David Foreman, Earth First! Everything we have developed over the last 100 years should be destroyed. Pentti Linkola If you ask me, itd be a little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy because of what we would do with it. We ought to be looking for energy sources that are adequate for our needs, but that wont give us the excesses of concentrated energy with which we could do mischief to the earth or to each other. Amory Lovins in The Mother EarthPlowboy Interview, Nov/Dec 1977, p.22 The only real good technology is no technology at all. Technology is taxation without representation, imposed by our elitist species (man) upon the rest of the natural world. John Shuttleworth What weve got to do in energy conservation is try to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, to have approached global warming as if it is real means energy conservation, so we will be doing the right thing anyway in terms of economic policy and environmental policy. Timothy Wirth, former U.S. Senator (D-Colorado) I suspect that eradicating smallpox was wrong. It played an important part in balancing ecosystems.

John Davis, editor of Earth First! Journal Human beings, as a species, have no more value than slugs. John Davis, editor of Earth First! Journal The extinction of the human species may not only be inevitable but a good thing.This is not to say that the rise of human civilization is insignificant, but there is no way of showing that it will be much help to the world in the long run. Economist editorial We advocate biodiversity for biodiversitys sake. It may take our extinction to set things straight. David Foreman, Earth First! Phasing out the human race will solve every problem on earth, social and environmental. Dave Forman, Founder of Earth First! If radical environmentalists were to invent a disease to bring human populations back to sanity, it would probably be something like AIDS Earth First! Newsletter Human happiness, and certainly human fecundity, is not as important as a wild and healthy planetsSome of us can only hope for the right virus to come along. David Graber, biologist, National Park Service The collective needs of non-human species must take precedence over the needs and desires of humans. Dr. Reed F. Noss, The Wildlands Project If I were reincarnated, I would wish to be returned to Earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels. Prince Phillip, World Wildlife Fund Cannibalism is a radical but realistic solution to the problem of overpopulation. Lyall Watson, The Financial Times, 15 July 1995 Poverty For Those People We, in the green movement, aspire to a cultural model in which killing a forest will be considered more contemptible and more criminal than the sale of 6-year-old children to Asian brothels. Carl Amery Every time you turn on an electric light, you are making another brainless baby.

Helen Caldicott, Union of Concerned Scientists To feed a starving child is to exacerbate the world population problem. Lamont Cole If there is going to be electricity, I would like it to be decentralized, small, solar-powered. Gar Smith, editor of the Earth Island Institutes online magazine The Edge The only hope for the world is to make sure there is not another United States: We cant let other countries have the same number of cars, the amount of industrialization, we have in the U.S. We have to stop these Third World countries right where they are. And it is important to the rest of the world to make sure that they dont suffer economically by virtue of our stopping them. Michael Oppenheimer, Environmental Defense Fund The continued rapid cooling of the earth since WWII is in accord with the increase in global air pollution associated with industrialization, mechanization, urbanization and exploding population. Paul Ehrlich, in The Population Bomb (1968) I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000. Paul Ehrlich in (1969) In ten years all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish. Paul Ehrlich, Earth Day (1970) Before 1985, mankind will enter a genuine age of scarcityin which the accessible supplies of many key minerals will be facing depletion. Paul Ehrlich in (1976) This [cooling] trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. Peter Gwynne, Newsweek 1976 There are ominous signs that the earths weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food productionwith serious political implications for just about every nation on earth. The drop in food production could begin quite soon The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologist are hard-pressed to keep up with it. Newsweek, April 28, (1975) This cooling has already killed hundreds of thousands of people. If it continues and no strong action is taken, it will cause world famine, world chaos and world war, and this could all come about before the year 2000.

Lowell Ponte in The Cooling, 1976 If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder by the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us in an ice age.

Todays debate about global warming is essentially a debate about freedom. The environmentalists would like to mastermind each and every possible (and impossible) aspect of our lives.
Vaclav Klaus Blue Planet in Green Shackles

08 May 2007

Self-Loathing Driven Ecophobia

In the end it all boils down to this; eco-phobes hate humanity. Whether its the current flavor of the decade, Global Warming, or past frenzies like Ozone Depletion or Population Bomb, every move these people make comes packaged with the same background noise We hate humanity humanity is bad bugs are better! What proof does one have ... why their own words of course: Case in Point Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd Society After all, we Homo sapiens are the last survivors of the hominid line, a group that has been on its way out for some time. The beetle family, for example, has some 700,000 species by comparison. Odds are many of the beetle species will survive the event (Holocene Extinction), whereas we will not. But the reality is that what is happening now is the result of the collective actions of us hominids. We are the ruthlessly territorial primates whose numbers have soared far beyond the level of global carrying capacity for the deadly behavioral characteristics that we display. (escalating human population is) a train that carries all the earths species as unwilling passengers with humans as the manically insane engineers unwilling to use the brake pedal. I was once severely criticized for describing human beings as being the AIDS of the Earth. I make no apologies for that statement. Our viral like behaviour can be terminal both to the present biosphere and ourselves. We are both the pathogen and the vector. But we also have the capability of being the anti-virus if only we can recognize the symptoms and address the disease with effective

measures of control. Who should have children? Those who are responsible and completely dedicated to the responsibility which is actually a very small percentage of humans. Being a parent should be a career. Whereas some people are engineers, musicians, or lawyers, others with the desire and the skills can be fathers and mothers. Schools can be eliminated if the professional parent is also the educator of the child. We should not be living in human communities that enclose tiny preserved ecosystems within them. Human communities should be maintained in small population enclaves within linked wilderness ecosystems. No human community should be larger than 20,000 people and separated from other communities by wilderness areas. Communication systems can link the communities. In other words, people should be placed in parks within ecosystems instead of parks placed in human communities. We need vast areas of the planet where humans do not live at all and where other species are free to evolve without human interference.We need to radically and intelligently reduce human populations to fewer than one billion. We need to eliminate nationalism and tribalism and become Earthlings. And as Earthlings, we need to recognize that all the other species that live on this planet are also fellow citizens and also Earthlings. This is a planet of incredible diversity of life-forms; it is not a planet of one species as many of us believe. We need to stop burning fossil fuels and utilize only wind, water, and solar power with all generation of power coming from individual or small community units like windmills, waterwheels, and solar panels. Sea transportation should be by sail. The big clippers were the finest ships ever built and sufficient to our needs. Air transportation should be by solar powered blimps when air transportation is necessary. All consumption should be local. No food products need to be transported over hundreds of miles to market. All commercial fishing should be abolished. If local communities need to fish the fish should be caught individually by hand. Preferably vegan and vegetarian diets can be adopted. We need to eliminate herds of ungulates like cows and sheep and replace them with wild ungulates like bison and caribou and allow those species to fulfill the proper roles in nature. We need to restore the prey predator relationship and bring back the wolf and the bear. We need the large predators and ungulates, not as food, but as custodians of the land that absorbs the carbon dioxide and produces the oxygen. We need to live with them in mutual respect. We need to remove and destroy all fences and barriers that bar wildlife from moving freely across the land. We need to lower populations of domestic housecats and dogs. Already the worlds housecats consume more fish than all the worlds seals and we have made the cow into the largest aquatic predator on the planet because more than one half of all fish taken from the sea is converted into meal for animal feed. We need to stop flying, stop driving cars, and jetting around on marine recreational vehicles. The Amish survive without cars and so can the rest of us. The next time your friendly neighbourhood ecophobe gives you their rant ... keep in mind that they hate you ... they hate others ... and they hate us all. Just getting them to admit it is the tricky part.

Posted by Paul at 3:01 PM

12 January 2010

Sink Them All

I used to have some sympathy for the anti-whalers, especially in light of the dangerous reduction in some whale species ... but then I read THIS: There is only one cure, only one way of stopping this rising epidemic of extinctions. The solution requires an extraordinarily immense effort by all of human society but it is achievable. We need to re-wild the planet. We need to "get ourselves back to the garden" as Joni Mitchell once so poetically framed it. This is a process that will require a complete overhaul of all of humanities economic, cultural, and life style systems. Within the context of our present anthropocentric mind-set the solution is impossible. It will require a complete transformation of all human realities. But the alternative is unimaginable. Unless we address the problem, we will be faced with the complete transformation of the planet from one of diversity to ecosystems shattered, weakened, and destroyed by mass extinction and the collapse of bio-diversity. One hundred and fifty years ago, Henry David Thoreau wrote that "in wildness is the preservation of the world." We should not be living in human communities that enclose tiny preserved ecosystems within them. Human communities should be maintained in small population enclaves within linked wilderness ecosystems. No human community should be larger than 20,000 people and separated from other communities by wilderness areas. Communication systems can link the communities. In other words, people should be placed in parks within ecosystems instead of parks placed in human communities. We need vast areas of the planet where humans do not live at all and where other species are free to evolve without human interference. We need to radically and intelligently reduce human populations to fewer than one billion. We need to eliminate nationalism and tribalism and become Earthlings. And as Earthlings, we need to recognize that all the other species that live on this planet are also fellow citizens and also Earthlings. This is a planet of incredible diversity of life-forms; it is not a planet of one species as many of us believe. We need to stop burning fossil fuels and utilize only wind, water, and solar power with all generation of power coming from individual or small community units like windmills, waterwheels, and solar panels. Sea transportation should be by sail. The big clippers were the finest ships ever built and sufficient to our needs. Air transportation should be by solar powered blimps when air transportation is necessary.

All consumption should be local. No food products need to be transported over hundreds of miles to market. All commercial fishing should be abolished. If local communities need to fish the fish should be caught individually by hand. Preferably vegan and vegetarian diets can be adopted. We need to eliminate herds of ungulates like cows and sheep and replace them with wild ungulates like bison and caribou and allow those species to fulfill the proper roles in nature. We need to restore the prey predator relationship and bring back the wolf and the bear. We need the large predators and ungulates, not as food, but as custodians of the land that absorbs the carbon dioxide and produces the oxygen. We need to live with them in mutual respect. We need to remove and destroy all fences and barriers that bar wildlife from moving freely across the land. We need to lower populations of domestic housecats and dogs. Already the world's housecats consume more fish than all the world's seals and we have made the cow into the largest aquatic predator on the planet because more than one half of all fish taken from the sea is converted into meal for animal feed. We need to stop flying, stop driving cars, and jetting around on marine recreational vehicles. The Mennonites survive without cars and so can the rest of us. We can retain technology but within the context of Henry David Thoreau's simple message to "simplify, simplify, simplify." We need an economic system that provides all people with educational, medical, security, and support systems without mass production and vast utilization of resources. This will only work within the context of a much smaller global population. Who should have children? Those who are responsible and completely dedicated to the responsibility which is actually a very small percentage of humans. Being a parent should be a career. Whereas some people are engineers, musicians, or lawyers, others with the desire and the skills can be fathers and mothers. Schools can be eliminated if the professional parent is also the educator of the child.

Posted by Paul at 7:56 AM

'Go green or we'll kill your kids' says Richard Curtis eco-propaganda shocker
By James Delingpole Politics Last updated: October 1st, 2010

Gillian Anderson, Peter Crouch [a tall footballer], Radiohead, David Ginola [a French footballer] and above all Richard Curtis, I salute you! You have just released a video which has entered history as the most emetic, ugly, counterproductive eco-propaganda movie ever made. Believe me this thing is going to go viral beyond your wildest dreams. But unfortunately that virus is ebola. (Hat tips: Barry Woods/Tom Dalton/Pete Hayes/half the world.) Heres what the Guardian had to say, excitedly, when it previewed the video yesterday:

Had a look? Well, Im certain youll agree that detonating school kids, footballers and movie stars into gory pulp for ignoring their carbon footprints is attention-grabbing. It then goes on to quote one or two of the usual suspects, such as this light-hearted, no we dont really want to blow up schoolchildren for showing insufficient environmental zeal, thats just our sense of humour, ha ha ha ha little missy: Doing nothing about climate change is still a fairly common affliction, even in this day and age. What to do with those people, who are together threatening everybodys existence on this planet? Clearly we dont really think they should be blown up, thats just a joke for the mini-movie, but maybe a little amputating would be a good place to start? jokes 10:10 founder and Age of Stupid film maker Franny Armstrong. Whats fascinating, reading this kind of thing, is seeing just how far removed from reality the green movement has gone. Kyoto is dead. Copenhagen was a flop. Cancun is going to make a mockery of all those green dreams about global carbon emissions legislation. And how do the environmentalists respond? By force of argument? By presenting new evidence which supports their cause? Nope. By threatening to blow up anyone who disagrees with them. And not just that: they believe this is actually an entirely reasonable and rather amusing position to adopt. This isnt, of course, the first time green propagandists have inadvertently revealed the murderous misanthropy which lurks behind their cloak of ecological righteousness. Greenpeace made this nasty one two years ago:

And lets not forget this little charmer produced last year by those cuddly, panda-hugging souls at the World Wildlife Fund.

But with this new monstrosity, truly the great Richard Curtis has excelled himself. Its so bad, it makes his previous shimmering masterpieces of emetica Love Actually, The Girl In The Cafe, The Boat That Rocked look like Battleship Potemkin. It makes the Vicar of Dibley look like a collaboration between Oscar Wilde and Shakespeare. Its so deliciously, unspeakably, magnificently bleeding awful it makes you wish that the man could be given a ticker tape parade in every major capital city, in gratitude for the devastating damage he has (unwittingly) wrought on the eco-fascist cause. But dont just take it from me. Judge for yourself from the comments so far on Youtube. When I looked at midnight last night, it had been viewed 400 times. Already its well past 10,000 views. And the majority of commenters whove seen it are so utterly appalled, theyre saying things like: Have just left my car running facing the plants. They are crying. and My hot water is gas so every time I turn on the tap I can go outside and watch the emissions pouring out of the unit. Red button this, bitches. I think we get the message.

Climate Change extremism - "Care to join us, no pressure"

from Not a sheep I still can't believe that this video is for real, I keep expecting someone from 10:10 to appear and explain how it is just a publicity stunt and not to be taken seriously. Now whilst 10:10 and Richard Curtis are, I am sure, not really suggesting people should be blown up for not agreeing to go along with the policies of 10:10, they are just trying to get our attention, I wonder how they will feel when some eco-nut is inspired by this film to blow-up something or someone that they feel are not supporting 10:10. I hope this doesn't happen but there are some very odd people out there and 4x4s have been damaged by ecomentalists in the past 'coz they are destroying the planet'.

Incidentally "Getting your father to insulate the loft"; sexist? I note that IN The Guardian 10:10 founder and Age of Stupid film maker Franny Armstrong 'joked': 'Doing nothing about climate change is still a fairly common affliction, even in this day and age. What to do with those people, who are together threatening everybody's existence on this planet? Clearly we don't really think they should be blown up, that's just a joke for the mini-movie, but maybe a little amputating would be a good place to start? ... But why take such a risk of upsetting or alienating people, I ask her: "Because we have got about four years to stabilise global emissions and we are not anywhere near doing that. All our lives are at threat and if that's not worth jumping up and down about, I don't know what is." "We 'killed' five people to make No Pressure a mere blip compared to the 300,000 real people who now die each year from climate change," she adds. Jamie Glover, the child-actor who plays the part of Philip and gets blown up, has similarly few qualms: "I was very happy to get blown up to save the world."' Ah the certainties of the true believers, they are right and any one who does not believe is a 'denier' and deserves to lose a limb or at least a digit, if not be blown up. What delightful people, in earlier times I assume they would have been in favour of burning heretics at the stake.

Eco-fascism jumps the shark: massive, epic fail!

By James Delingpole Environment Last updated: October 1st, 2010 I predicted this morning that No Pressure Richard Curtiss spectacularly ill-judged ecopropaganda movie for the 10:10 campaign would prove a disastrous own goal for the green movement. But what I could never have imagined was how quickly public disgust even among greenies would reach such a pitch that the campaigners would be compelled to withdraw it from the internet. That, at any rate, is what they keep trying to do cancelling it whenever it appears on You Tube, pulling it from their campaign website and so on. Unfortunately their efforts are being frustrated by people on the sceptical side of the climate debate, who keep peskily insisting on reposting the video where everyone can view it. And rightly so. With No Pressure, the environmental movement has revealed the snarling, wicked, homicidal misanthropy beneath its cloak of gentle, bunny-hugging righteousness. I dont think any of us will ever be able to look at another Richard Curtis movie in quite the same way ever again. It may even be that we will now never, ever be able to enjoy another episode of the Vicar of Dibley, because all well be able to think about is Dawn French with a Panzerfaust beneath

her cassock ready to blast off the heads of any members of her congregation who dont believe in Man Made Global Warming. What a sad day this is for us all. PS If you want to register your disgust, a commenter from the previous blog Reconstruct has some helpful suggestions: Now youve seen the video, prepare not to be surprised that your taxes helped pay for it. The 10:10 Campaign is supported by: ActionAid (Govt of UK 2nd largest funder in 2009); The Carbon Trust (surely #1 on the list of quangos-to-go); The Energy Saving Trust. Be not surprised that The Guardian is their media partner. On the other hand, if youre outraged by the video, you might be interested to know that they also have a small number of genuine commercial sponsors: O2, Sony and Kyocera all have helped fund the 10:10 Campaign. I suggest that the first thing to do is to make your outrage known to O2, Sony and Kyocera, suggesting that their commercial interests might not be furthered by funding murderous nazi will-fulfillment propaganda. UPDATE: Heres the excuse posted by the 10:10 organisers on the Guardian website. Sorry. Today we put up a mini-movie about 10:10 and climate change called No Pressure. With climate change becoming increasingly threatening, and decreasingly talked about in the media, we wanted to find a way to bring this critical issue back into the headlines whilst making people laugh. We were therefore delighted when Britains leading comedy writer, Richard Curtis writer of Blackadder, Four Weddings, Notting Hill and many others agreed to write a short film for the 10:10 campaign. Many people found the resulting film extremely funny, but unfortunately some didnt and we sincerely apologise to anybody we have offended. As a result of these concerns weve taken it off our website. Wed like to thank the 50+ film professionals and 40+ actors and extras and who gave their time and equipment to the film for free. We greatly value your contributions and the tremendous enthusiasm and professionalism you brought to the project. At 10:10 were all about trying new and creative ways of getting people to take action on climate change. Unfortunately in this instance we missed the mark. Oh well, we live and learn. Onwards and upwards, Eugenie, Franny, Daniel, Lizzie and the whole 10:10 team

Friday, 1 October 2010

1010- No pressure. Apology?

You decide Sorry

Looks to me like theyre not that apologetic. And I can guess that they come from the Notting Hill set. Judging by their names. (I may be wrong) If you havent seen the video it can be found HERE Posted by The Filthy Engineer at 19:40

Friday, 1 October 2010

That was quick. Suspiciously quick.
The EcoNazis have taken down their call for the deaths of all those who deny the Cult of the Green God. It's still on YouTube as a private video so those erstwhile gas-chamber operators can still masturbate themselves into a frenzy over the possibility of future State-sanctioned murder. Their pretend apology includes a few lines that make their mindset even clearer than the video. They persist in the assertion that since it was written by Richard Curtis it is, by definition, a Good Film. I'm glad I didn't write it, it would be terrible to have them constantly remind people of that, and to deflect the blame onto the writer. As a result of these concerns we've taken it off our website. We won't be making any attempt to censor or remove other versions currently in circulation on the internet. No need to keep it on the website. Job done. The message of hate and death is out there, which was the idea. They have, however, made the YouTube version private, presumably because of the comments it was attracting. So they are not censoring the copies they released but they are censoring comment on them. Fortunately some of those comments are preserved here. At 10:10 we're all about trying new and creative ways of getting people to take action on climate change. Unfortunately in this instance we missed the mark. Oh well, we live and learn. You live, yes. Something you seek to deny those who disagree with you. So will you be bombing the Royal Society next? It's funny to blow people up who don't agree with you. Just as it's funny to steal from smokers in the street or to deny employment to anyone who doesn't fit the Standard Human shape. Soon it will be funny to load all those who don't agree with the Socialist agenda onto cattle trucks, funnier still to send them into the showers and absolutely hilarious to turn on the taps. Watch their faces when they realise that it's gas, not water, coming through the pipes. Oh, those socialists will be rolling about the floor laughing. Like last time. This is a new Righteous method for the Internet age. Release a sick video, make sure it's been

copied and then delete their own copy and issue an 'apology'. Then they can claim that the copies in circulation are nothing to do with them. Eventually they will claim that the video was never theirs, that the ones now circulating are fakes created by the 'far right' to discredit them. The original was full of fluffy bunnies and eiderdowns, not the gore-fest and the street muggings portrayed in these 'far right' videos. They would show the original video but it has been deleted by 'far right' hackers and they no longer have a copy. Your false apology is most definitely not accepted, 10:10. When pensioners are dying this winter, you will be responsible. Those actors who gave their time for free to threaten us will be responsible. The children who were happy to be blown up to 'save the planet' will be responsible. Richard Curtis, yes, you will be responsible. Your doctrine of hate is once more distributed so you can delete yours and pretend you meant no harm. Yet you did it deliberately, and I say that because you have now used the same technique at least twice and will soon use it again. Can they live with it? Probably. They will doublethink it into 'evil pensioner-killing capitalism' even as they rip the cigarette from a shivering pensioner's mouth, beat them for being overweight and then turn off their gas and electricity to 'save the planet'. That is the mind of Socialism. That is what they pretend is the 'far right' but there is no 'far right'. There never was. It was them all along.

(I'm off for a Smoky-Drinky. Back later.) (Quick update before I go - someone's posted another copy to YouTube. The Green Men said they would take no action to censor other copies. I wonder.) Posted by Leg-iron at 19:13 Chuckles said... Their apology is the standard 'we are sorry we got caught.' Very similar to the J Ross/R Brand affair, both in execution and resultant 'apology.' They have this unquenchable, burning conviction that they are right about everything that matters to them in their wretched, twisted lives, and yes they have learned from their mistakes. Clearly, because as per Peter Cook, they can repeat them exactly. 2 October 2010 11:45

Lets Get Viral!

Oct 2nd, 2010 by Ian B. A warmist umbrella group calling themselves 10:10 have released a video. It was written by cuddly leftie insider Richard Blackadder Curtis and it depicts well, watch it yourself-

The above video is an unofficial copy as 10:10, inside their bubble of righteousness, didnt seem to imagine what reaction it would get and once they did realise what a mistake they have made they took it down; it appears The Enemy are trying to bury it generally. Its not just a disastrous own goal. I must admit, its motivation is virtually incomprehensible. There is only one possible interpretation: climate deniers or, as seen in the video, just climate, er, lazies deserve to be killed. Ive tried hard to think of another message it might be trying to convey, and there isnt one. Even weirder is the shock and horror of the bystanders (other children and adults) and the duplicity of the leaders, with the thats fine thing before they press the explosive button. I really cant quite fathom why Warmists would want to make themselves look so evil, other than the obvious and presumably true analysis that they really do find the idea of acting this way enormously appealing. Kill the enemy, no warning, lie to them first, then have a laugh about it. As I watched it, I kept expecting some kind of clever surprise twist, and there wasnt one. If you wont join in, well kill you. Thats the message. That is all there is. Anyway, dont let them bury their ghastly admission of their true nature. And if youre in the UK, write your MP. This evil group have support pledged from MPs- the Liberals Democrats are up to their necks in it, especially the oleaginous creep himself Simon Hughes. Furthermore they are a registered charity, and they are partnering- thats a polite word for infiltrating- the state owned education system. The State is supporting this. If you think thats unacceptable, tell your MP. steng says: October 2, 2010 at 3:25 am This is utterly vile, and the perfect summary of what the Left and their dancing dolls the Warmists wants for us. You are worthless because you will not bow down and obey, so you are murdered. Thats right: the cause is so big and so noble (and remember the no pressure part) that you not only deserve to die without explanation but the people around you are splattered with your remains. So casual, so caring. So perfectly sensible for the mindless drones who yearn for a socialist empire where ordinary people are simply disposed of because they might not agree with the self-styled experts. So the message is clear from the AGW crowd . If you do not obey, if you dare try to think for yourself, you will die and they do not care. Richard Curtis, if you wrote this you have entered the pantheon of weasels and shits. You have joined the ranks of the turds who applaud Mao for killing millions, the ones who feel so thrilled that murderers like Che Guevara look so foppishly handsome in his hat, the ones who think Stalin was right to sacrifice common people in order to promote his imagined superiority. maybe the Monbiots and Toynbees will be punching the air in delight, until maybe they realise that they have just scored the most spectacular own goal ever. NickM says: October 2, 2010 at 3:27 am Jesus wept Ian. That is un-fucking-believable and then you mention the uber twat Simon Hughes. The time has come the Walrus said to speak of many things

A woman I know is very green. She was espousing her beliefs to my wife. My wife said, But thats fascism. Reply: If thats what it takes No apology, no hint of regret. Just fucking steely-eyed determination from a retired teacher of - yes you guessed it - German. Readers. Make this go viral. Take this everywhere. Show it in your church, synagogue or mosque, project it on the moon. Show it everywhere because this is what the Greens think of me. They want to kill me. They probably want to kill you as well. They are not vaguely misguided but nice touchyfeelie types. They are Pol Pot in Fairtrade jumpers. They are in short absolute cunts. Ian B says: October 2, 2010 at 3:40 am Wot steng & Nick said. I have to admit Im still kind of in denial (Haha!) about it. I cant quite believe its real. But it is. This is part of the reason Ive been arguing that Im not that bothered that the Muzzies want to kill me. Everybody whose belief is based on the idea that there is only one way and all other roads are unacceptable ends up with the kill the dissenters strategy. We live in interesting times, in the Chinese sense. Very interesting times. I really didnt think Curtis could create anything more awful than The Vicar Of Dibley. You live and learn. This video will haunt the Greenofascists for all eternity. Roue le Jour says: October 2, 2010 at 2:50 pm Panties definitely unbunched. Instead I marvel at the splendid isolation of these paragons whose Let them eat cake moment has revealed not only a complete disconnect from reality but also utter ignorance of life outside the palaces of privilege. People who wont try to reduce their carbon consumption get blown up. What message are non-believers supposed to be taking away here? Youd better go along with it whether you believe or not? Or is it a dog whistle to warmists that its OK to harm non-warmists? Its humour you say? Well, we masses arent allowed to joke about such things, just ask Paul Chambers. I make two observations about this film. Firstly, its not intended to convince unbelievers, its designed to whip up hatred against them. In that sense it is like the Nazi films that excoriated the Jews over shots of rats. Jews were not expected to watch them and think Ooh, thats right, I am just like a rat. Secondly, the message is, We know weve lost the argument. Now were going to explain to you that we were only arguing out of politeness. We dont have to, and in future were not going to. Sam Duncan says: October 3, 2010 at 12:26 pm Yep, no panty-bunching here either. The problem with it is exactly the same as what Jeff Randall said of the BBC: They think they are on the middle ground. Not one person involved with the making of that film appeared to think that depicting the deliberate killing of objectors might be in the least objectionable. Of course no sane person really thinks they actually want to kill anyone, but it says a lot about them and the closed world they inhabit that nobody seems to have said, Hang on, weve got someone killing people here. Mightnt it be better if we see them suffering the consequences of their actions rather than just being, you know, rubbed out by an authority figure? I

mean, wont that look a tiny bit sinister to a lot of people? But no: theyre the good guys, you see Not only that, but none of them had the basic self-awareness to see that its actually a perfect satire on the Greenist movement itself. I think thats whats really meant when people talk about the veil dropping and seeing the real face of Greenism in the film. Its all nice and friendly, doing your bit, chipping in, being ethical, but woe betide anyone who dissents.

No Pressure: Fascistic New Video Red-Lines the EcoInsanity Meter

October 1, 2010 - by Ed Driscoll Before clicking on the above video, take the warning of the Sad Hill blog to heart: Do NOT watch this video if you wish to avoid portrayals of extreme violence, genocide, child murders, demonic practice and terrorism all in the name of environmentalism. That disclaimer out of the way, well get to the insane video at the top of the post in just a moment, but first, some background. In a recent edition of City Journal, Fred Siegel explored how the radical environmentalism of the early 1970s created a new breed of Progressives Against Progress, as he put it: In 1972, Sir John Maddox, editor of the British journal Nature, noted that though it had once been usual to see maniacs wearing sandwich boards that proclaimed the imminent end of the Earth, they had been replaced by a growing number of frenzied activists and politicized scientists making precisely the same claim. In the years since then, liberalism has seen recurring waves of such endof-days hysteria. These waves have shared not only a common pattern but often the same cast of characters. Strangely, the promised despoliations are most likely to be presented as imminent when Republicans are in the White House. In each case, liberals have argued that the threat of catastrophe can be averted only through drastic actions in which the ordinary political mechanisms of democracy are suspended and power is turned over to a body of experts and supermen. Paradoxically, todays environmental fascists can use the power of the free market against itself, taking advantage of the freedom brought by powerful advances in computer video and computer illustration over the last decade to produce messages preaching the very opposite of freedom and individuality. Last September, shortly before the Hide the Decline story broke, doing to the lefts global cooling/warming/climate change/global climate disruption fantasies what RatherGate did for Dan Rathers reputation, we noted a series of ads designed to raise awareness of global warming. Instead they raised awareness of how desperate the eco-left have been to escalate their rhetoric. First, there was MasterCards ad, originally spotted by James Lileks, in which a credit card company helps a thoughtless father see the error of his consumerist ways by buying doubleplusgood enviro-themed consumer goods, thanks to the prodding of his benighted young son:
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YouTube Direkt

Then there was this 9/11-themed ad: Here we go again the latest 9/11-mocking botched ad campaign, this time from the Brazilian division of DDB Worldwide (whose initials stand for the agencys founders, Doyle, Dane, and Bernbach), the ad agency employed possibly for the last time by the World Wildlife Fund:

Click the image to enlarge to full size to see the ads Fire make sea gods angry caption, to borrow from an Iowahawk riff from a few years ago. It reads: The tsunami killed 100 times more people than 9/11. The planet is brutally powerful. Respect it. Preserve it. You can watch an accompanying video version of the ad here, which the WWF attempted to have squelched from YouTube. And we rounded-up several other 9/11-themed ads to promote antismoking, Starbucks, and even Spanish socialist politics around that time as well. And then in November of last year came this infamous YouTube clip:
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YouTube Direkt Back then I wrote: As I noted in last weeks Hide The Decline edition of my Silicon Graffiti video blog, in what turned out to be, in retrospect, the run-up to ClimateGate, the left seemed to be dramatically escalating the craziness of their global warming-themed PSAs and advertisements. By the fall of this year, it reached the point where the WWF was comparing global warming to a whole fleet of terrorist-controlled planes attacking the World Trade Center. Which was followed by this ad from Plane Stupid, the British anti-aviation group, which, in what was clearly another 9/11-inspired ad, featured photorealistic digital animation of polar bears falling from the sky, hitting skyscrapers, leaving blood trails on the sides of those buildings, and ultimately flattening parked cars.

Short of replacing the bears with humans falling from the sky for the complete 9/11 experience, once youve reached this level of hysteria, where else do you go to ramp up the hysteria? Well, last Super Bowl had Audis Green Police ad, which was actually kind of fun for those of us who arent Gaia Worshipers, as it reminded people of the eco-lefts lust to control the lives of others:
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YouTube Direkt .But Englands Green Police takes their capital punishment seriously. Unlike a recent American Express advertisement, theyre not content to merely demolish hydroelectric dams; theyve blowing up, Scanners-style, people whove committed doubleplusungood oldenvirothink. Found via Ed Morrissey at Hot Air, its the ad that really turns the reactionary enviro-rhetoric up to 11 and way beyond. You can also find copies at EyeBlast, and at the moment, YouTube, although as Ed notes its makers keep trying to get it taken off there. As with last years eco-horror-porn by the WWF, I cant image why. Or as Ed writes: If you want to see a demonstration of that, watch this appalling video that shows global-warming enforcers imagining the world theyd like to create, but beware that it includes some disturbing and disturbed images. What makes this fascinating is that the people who produce this dreck have no clue as to just how far removed they have become from normal human sensibilities, or at least they didnt until the video began provoking the fully-predictable reaction. They have become so wrapped up in Gaia that they seem to have little connection to humanity. The other, mainly unrelated point that comes to mind is that this represents a reductio ad absurdum of the view from the hard Left about how dissent gets treated by the mainstream American populace, vis-a-vis the Iraq war especially. Can you imagine the reaction had an organization like Move America Forward produced a video like this, where those who didnt support a robust strategy for the war on terror were blown up by a button-pushing advocate for the strategy? Especially children in a classroom being terrorized by their teacher into compliance with the groupthink? Ed links to an article on the video by James Delingpole of the London Telegraph, who declares Eco-fascism jumps the shark: massive, epic fail! I predicted this morning that No Pressure Richard Curtiss spectacularly ill-judged ecopropaganda movie for the 10:10 campaign would prove a disastrous own goal for the green movement. But what I could never have imagined was how quickly public disgust even among greenies would reach such a pitch that the campaigners would be compelled to withdraw it from the internet. That, at any rate, is what they keep trying to do cancelling it whenever it appears on You Tube, pulling it from their campaign website and so on.

Unfortunately their efforts are being frustrated by people on the sceptical side of the climate debate, who keep peskily insisting on reposting the video where everyone can view it. And rightly so. With No Pressure, the environmental movement has revealed the snarling, wicked, homicidal misanthropy beneath its cloak of gentle, bunny-hugging righteousness. In his earlier article, Delingpole wrote: Kyoto is dead. Copenhagen was a flop. Cancun is going to make a mockery of all those green dreams about global carbon emissions legislation. And how do the environmentalists respond? By force of argument? By presenting new evidence which supports their cause? Nope. By threatening to blow up anyone who disagrees with them. T0 which Tim Blair responds, Its all theyve got left: Interestingly, 10:10 the organisation responsible was founded by Franny Armstrong, director of enviro-panic film The Age of Stupid. How stupid is it to launch a campaign that has to be abandoned within 24 hours? The clip itself was directed by cloying Brit romance specialist Richard Curtis, who doesnt exactly seem an obvious choice to advocate reduced consumption: Curtis lives in Notting Hill and has a country house in Walberswick, Suffolk with script editor and broadcaster Emma Freud. They have four children; daughter Scarlett Rachel Anne, and three sons, James, Charlie and Spike. They have another country retreat in Henley, Oxfordshire. The pasty little hypocrite. UPDATE III. Naturally, 10:10 is partially taxpayer-funded. And the Guardian previous backers of another successful campaign is their media partner. Beautifully, the Guardians initial report now carries this update: Please note that 10:10 took down the original video and the version above is a copy uploaded elsewhere on YouTube. The Guardian is media partner to a group that is ashamed of its own work. Theyre a nice fit. Meanwhile, the Anchoress adds: Remember that cocktail party game, Who Goes Nazi? Well, after checking out these links at Instapundit, I think we can make some pretty good guesses. Content warning on the videos. Both of them, the exploding people and the malevolent kid who seems close to murder. What a repellent bunch of people, with sick, twisted minds.

Watch the videossome joke, eh?and then do what Im going to do; take a long drive, burn some candles, cook dinner over some coals, and turn on all the lights. Im sick to death of these liars and freaks. I know they believe theyre smarter than the rest of us, but they (like some in our own government) are too stupid to realize that all theyre doing is destroying their own credibility and creating backlash. Big, big, backlash. One would hope; one would also hope that 10:10s sponsors (and theres a list of them here) will receive a backlash as well for funding this message. On the other hand, as PJMs own Zombie notes, the video has done the world a service. Zombie dubs 10/10s efforts The Most Honest Political Ad of All Time: Within minutes of its unveiling earlier today, No Pressure caused such an uproar that it was taken offline while the producers issued an apology. Luckily, enterprising bloggers saved copies and have been frantically re-uploading them to YouTube, to prevent the video from disappearing down the memory hole. Why? Because no video has ever provided such a revealing and shocking peek into the mindset of the Global Warming alarmists. Exactly. Back in 2006, in the Christian Science Monitor, Julia Gorin explored the moral equivalent of war argument the far left had employed to equate radical environmentalism with terrorism; with the green movements biggest celebrity endorsement yet, that circle has really gotten squared! Though its far from the first-time that radical environmentalism has linked itself (call it an Eco Anschluss, as Cond Nasts Traveler magazine approvingly did last month) to such eliminationist rhetoric. Or as Mark Steyn wrote a few years ago: The ecochondriacs mean it: Thisd be a pretty nice planet if we didnt live here. This video is the most graphic demonstration of that message yet. But as I said last year, once youve reached this level of hysteria, where else do you go to ramp up the hysteria? Sooner or later, as I was certain when I wrote that, wed see an answer. And this time around? Cmon boys, the bar has been set yet again: Lets see what you can do to top this. Update: Welcome to those clicking in from Glenn Becks The Blaze website.

If We Are Not Free to Disagree, We Are Not Free

October 1, 2010 The 10:10 Campaign video advertisement featuring people being summarily executed for disputing the need to reduce their carbon footprint has caused a stir during the past 24 hours. Earlier today it was removed from YouTube by its creators, whove issued an apology.

That apology sheds no light on how the dozens of people involved in its production could have believed the ads message was remotely appropriate. The apologys breezy conclusion: Oh well, we live and learn. Onwards and upwards suggests that the undersigned Franny, Lizzie, Eugenie and the whole 10:10 team still dont get it. Theyre clueless about how deeply offensive it is, in a free society, to suggest that people with alternative points-of-view deserve to be liquidated. If we are not free to disagree, we are not free. Period. This video has, no doubt, caused problems for large numbers of good people. The 10:10 Campaign has been endorsed by corporations such as Sony, educational institutions such as Oxford, and religious groups such as the scrupulously non-violent Quakers. A variety of other organizations from ambulance attendants to Londons Royal Opera House to a long list of UK local governments are also associated with it. They had no idea, when they signed up for what they believed to be a good cause, that a lurid video would leave all of them splattered with blood and gore. That being said, some of the comments left on blogs and news sites in reaction to this video have themselves been ill-advised. Some people seem to think the proper response to offensive speech is to grasp at some lever of the state the police, obscenity laws, broadcast regulators to shut it down or prosecute it. This is a waste of resources. Offensive speech needs to be met with alternative speech. Those of us who are alarmed and offended need to use our own voices. We need to explain to all of those individuals and organizations who have publicly aligned themselves with the 10:10 Campaign that the world is now watching them. This is their moment. They need to disassociate themselves from this video. They also need to convince the 10:10 Campaigns leadership that a more persuasive apology is required an apology that demonstrates that this organization actually has learned from this debacle. CREDIT WHERE ITS DUE There are reasons to feel hopeful. Climate change activist Bill McKibben and activist-scientistblogger Joe Romm have both repudiated this video. Which makes it clear that people on different sides of the climate debate are united on this, at least. The former describes the video as gross and says: Its the kind of stupidity that hurts our side, reinforcing in peoples minds a series of preconceived notions, not the least of which is that were out-of-control and out of touch Its a shame McKibben felt the need, in the same statement, to refer to those with whom he disagrees as climate deniers. These sorts of casual insults are surely part of the same continuum of dehumanization that leads to the production of videos such as the one under discussion. McKibben describes himself as a mild-mannered guy, a Methodist Sunday School teacher. How does calling people names, rather than treating them with courtesy and respect, mesh with that? Romms repudiation is even more robust. In his words: The video is beyond tasteless and should be widely condemned.

Too bad, he too, then hurls insults of his own at people he calls anti-science, pro-pollution disinformers. Why is it so difficult, gentlemen, to connect the dots? Simplistic, black-and-white caricatures of opposing voices. Graphic blood-soaked videos. Hmm, might they be related? This has been called a teachable moment. What lessons shall we take away?

screen capture of 10:10 campaign's "No Pressure" video on YouTube as it appeared on Sept. 30, 2010

Mad Men
Environmental PSAs have certainly evolved since the day of Woodsy Owl and Iron Eyes Cody, if this educational film from the UK is any indication (h/t Tim Blair).

An impressive piece of work to be sure, especially when you consider the amount of effort that went into its making. It might even make a boffo Harvard Business School case study. London, sometime earlier this year: The 10:10 Project, a nonprofit NGO focused on reducing carbon, convenes a high level meeting in their posh modern conference room. After reviewing PowerPoint on the results of their latest government grant proposals and white-liberal-guilt fund raising campaigns, the 10:10 marketing team reports that previous communication efforts have not been proceeding as expected. "Perhaps what we need is a fresh new campaign," offers one of the conferees. "Something different, provocative... something edgy. Something that will really get our message across." This is greeted with great excitement. The finance director pours through spreadsheets and identifies a budget source. An executive screening committee is appointed who develop timelines and begin scheduling meetings with London's top agencies and independent film production firms.

Several weeks later, after sitting through a half dozen agency presentations that have yet to meet their standards, 10:10's highly paid executive brain trust arrives at a meeting at the sleek offices of London's hottest agency Splodey, Youngblood, Gutz & Bones. After introductions, small talk, and pastries, SYG&B's creative director - winner of 5 British Clio awards - strolls confidently to the television monitor at the front of the room and walks the 10:10 clients through a scene-by-scene video storyboard pitching a new promotional mini-movie that will solve their communication dilemma. The smoothness of the presentation masks the hundreds of late night man-hours and debating the SYG&B creative department spent in crafting it - but it was worth it. "Brilliant!" exclaims the 10:10 executive committee chair, to the enthusiastic nods of his colleagues. "Add one more exploding child, and I think we have a winner." Small changes are made to bring the production budget under $400,000, and the agency brings in a high profile horror director to put it on film. Ads are taken in the trades to announce casting calls. After reading through the script the Tottenham Hotspur football club agrees to allow its players to appear in the project. Fees are discussed through the players' agents. For nearly an entire week, the director and his two assistant directors peer intently at each auditioning actor as they pantomime reactions to imagined exploding bodies next to them. Do they give a convincing portrayal of traumatic shock? Will they read through the line again? It takes at least three auditions per role to finally cast the film, but this is what it takes to create art. Finally, with five separate locations scouted and scheduled, a unionized crew hired, and with craft services contracted, filming begins in late August. Excited members of the 10:10 team are on hand to witness the magic of movie making. Assistants with light meters take careful measurements of each shot and run the actors through their blocks. Hair and makeup and blood bucket workers stand at the ready. The shooting goes smoothly, requiring only five or six takes per scene. A week later, the raw footage goes to post production where the award winning editor begins paring it down to its final length. Special effects are subcontracted to London's top CGI and sound designers, to give the flying blood and bone fragments the you-are-there realism that will enhance the film's carbon-awareness-raising impact. After some last minute tweaks the director delivers the final cut to SYG&B in late September. A gala weekend premier screening is arranged at the 10:10 office, with key 10:10 donors, board members, staff and spouses on hand. As the film ends, party-goers erupt into enthusiastic applause. The director steps forward to accept toasts and accolades, and take a polite bow. And somehow, throughout this entire process, not one of the hundreds of people involved seemed to have questioned the wisdom of an advertising message advocating the violent, sudden death of people who disagree with it. Don Draper, call your office. October 01, 2010

Blow Me Up, Blow Me Down

Posted on October 1, 2010 by Anthony Watts

Screencap from 10:10's "No Pressure" video 10/1/10. Click to watch a version with comments from around the web Guest post by Thomas Fuller Well, with the calming passage of 24 hours, lets take another look at the 10:10 video showing the splatterfest of gore as skeptics play the more volatile roles from the worst portions of the movie Scanners. Its still disgusting. I spent four years in the Navy and have seen a lot. The film did not upset me physically or emotionally. My reaction was mental (Cue Michael Tobis: See? Fullers going mental) What disgusts me first is its target. The video is meant for the young. Young people get blown up by a calm and engaged teacher in the first scene, and music and sports and film figures appealing to the young are both victims and perpetrators throughout. Our reaction is irrelevant. They are not talking to us. They are talking to our children. What are they saying? That its okay to ostracize, bully and dismiss those who dont agree that climate change is uber alles (Oops! Godwin alert, Godwin alert) and that skeptics or the children of skeptics are fair game for whatever. As there is no real attempt at humour in the video, theres no point in pretending its a parody. Its instructional. Its not even aimed at helping children work towards reducing emissions. Its about helping children take aim at those who do not. This is worse than Orwellian, although Eric Blair would certainly understand the meaning behind this message. And I dont want to (and internet traditions would forbid me in any case) link this to the propaganda tactics of World War II. So somewhere in between those two, there is a special place in hell reserved for those whose intent it is to legitimize the cruelty of children towards each

other based on what has evidently become a religious belief. And I hope that none of the films makers reaches that special place ahead of their allotted timespanbut I hope they get there. Joe Romm and Bill McKibben have already announced they are Shocked! Shocked! that gambling is going on in their casino and that their perpetual campaign of invective and calumny has produced people who actually believe them and hate skeptics. So I guess its no harm, no foul. Just as it was not their fault when a disturbed environmentalist took hostages at the Discover Channel headquarters, just as when the WWF made an ad showing planes flying into New York skyscrapers, just as when a Greenpeace blogger told skeptics the world over that we know where you live. And as Anthony Watts knows full well, they also know where you work. But none of this is the fault of those who whip up the frenzy and the furor of those stupid enough to believe their hyperbole, enough to do something vicious, cruel, stupid or illegal. So I guess I cant blame hysterics like Romm and McKibben, who spend their days babbling about hell and high water and related mystical miseries, for any of the troubles weve seen. Except for the kids who will be downloading that video tonight. Both William Golding (Lord of the Flies) and J.M. Barrie (Peter Pan) knew full well that children need no help in being cruel. But this gives them license and legitimacy. And for that, Joe and Bill, I do hold you responsible. You sent the message firstit took years for 10:10 to make it explicit. Thomas Fuller http://www.redbubble.com/people/hfuller

No Pressure
from Frank Davis I saw Richard Curtis' mini-movie, No Pressure, today. I think it was supposed to be funny. And maybe, in another time, it might have been. But it's not particularly funny when you know the "deep Greens" really do think that there are far too many people living on the planet, and that most of them will have to die. We live in an age of deepening overt menace towards anyone who refuses to conform to popular opinion. In the slightly nervous Guardian preview, 10:10 founder Franny Armstrong brushes aside doubts: "We 'killed' five people to make No Pressure a mere blip compared to the 300,000 real people who now die each year from climate change," she adds. How many people actually do die from climate change? How do you know? It's exactly the same question as asking how many people die from passive smoking. And the answer in both cases is: none at all, most likely. But, like the fear of passive smoking, the fear of global warming is now part of a tidal wave of hysteria. And anyway which deaths are more "real"? The anonymous and non-existent 300,000 of the guesstimate, or the five people very realistically blown to pulp in No Pressure? They're both fictions, but only one is portrayed bloodily and graphically. James Delingpole writes: Richard Curtis, I salute you! You have just released a video which has entered history as the most emetic, ugly, counterproductive eco-propaganda movie ever made.

As ever, of course, I can't help but notice the parallels with the War on Smokers. They also are are under "no pressure" to quit smoking. And the threat is of real violence. Of fines, imprisonment, assault, eviction, sacking. They also have videos made about them encouraging violence against them. The smoking ban itself was an act of state violence against people who refused to conform to prevailing conventional wisdom. When persuasion didn't work, the apparatus of state coercion was unleashed upon them. From the Anchoress via Ed Driscoll: What a repellent bunch of people, with sick, twisted minds. Watch the videossome joke, eh?and then do what Im going to do; take a long drive, burn some candles, cook dinner over some coals, and turn on all the lights. Im sick to death of these liars and freaks. I know they believe theyre smarter than the rest of us, but they (like some in our own government) are too stupid to realize that all theyre doing is destroying their own credibility and creating backlash. Big, big, backlash. Indeed. Backlash is coming. They're not going to change people's minds by force. All they're going to do is ensure that everything they stand for will one day be completely and utterly rejected.

Saturday, October 2, 2010

Bang goes the neighbourhood
Posted by Devil's Kitchen at 10/02/2010 02:56:00 PM Now, your humble Devil is not going to get all outraged about this particular piece of Green idiocy because, unlike hyper-sensitive, po-faced, Leftoid tosspots, I just don't get offended about stuff like this.

However, I must admit that I am strugglingreally strugglingto see what the point of this film is supposed to be. You know, assuming that the point isn't "we are going to kill anyone who doesn't subscribe to the new orthodoxy". And I really cannot understand why anyone would think that it was funny. In the mealy-mouthed apology on the 10:10 website, the idiot organisers assert that... Many people found the resulting film extremely funny, but unfortunately some didn't and we sincerely apologise to anybody we have offended. I am not offended, but nor did I find it funny. Because it just isn't funny. At all. Because it lacks... well... jokes. Or even a joke. Perhaps if the majority of the people in the video had reacted in some different waywith something other than horror*then perhaps it might have been amusing.

But it just wasn't. And those who know me will testify to the fact that I have a pretty damn dark sense of humour. I think that one of the things that made it very unfunny was the fact of human agency. Perhaps if the people had spontaneously exploded, there could have been some amusement valueit could even have been made into some kind of political point. But there were peoplethose in a position of authority, in every casewho were actively detonating the naysayers. As someone who loathes the idea of authoritarian governments and structures, this is hardly going to appeal to me. (And yes, businesses have structures, but I understand that when I sign upI am certain that no contract that I have signed up to has ever intimated that, should I disagree with my boss on matters environmental (and I quite often do), he should have the right to sack melet alone explode me.) Over at EU Referendum, you can also view the "Making of..." video, where one of the kids involved says (slightly tongue-in-cheek. I hope)... I think it is vital to explode children for a good cause... Hmmmm. In some ways, I can agree with 10:10's message. I don't think that we should waste energy, and reducing energy consumption in the West by 10% is possibly a laudable aimif only to reduce my power bills. But it is not a do-or-die situation, and I use just enough power as I need to. Because, you see, I do actually have to pay the bills. And, given my attitude to catastrophic anthropogenic climate change (i.e. it ain't happening), I just don't give enough of a crap to try to do anything ab... BANG!**
* It's true that the footballers seemed unconcerned. But then, we expect that of footballers. After all, they are generally too stupid to be self-aware and thus have no fear of death. Or spit-roasting. ** Maybe it is funny after all.

Tlaloc the Climate God said... Judging by some of the comments the 10:10 team have made, the target of the joke was not sceptics, but the people who say they believe but don't do anything serious about it. They preach the message, but say 'no pressure' and let people get away with doing nothing. Of course, if they wanted to convey that message, then it should have been the teachers and employers getting blown up, for saying 'no pressure' and letting the doubters off. 10:10 think there *should* be pressure. But I guess the idea of blowing up earnest but ineffectual greenies probably struck a nerve, and maybe wouldn't have gone down well with their target audience of earnest but ineffectual greenies, and there were these far more *tempting* targets just sitting there...; the screenwriters just got carried away. Blowing people up is funny. What difference does it make if it's ineffectual greenies or sceptical delayers? They're

*both* responsible for the end of the world. That's all a guess, of course. It probably looks somewhat different from inside the millenarian mindset of somebody who actually believes the world is really, truly about to end, for real. Personally, I have difficulty twisting my brain that far. October 2, 2010 11:36 PM

Saturday, October 02, 2010

Climate Change - Blowing Up the Enemy
Once again, I'm late to the party. But I'd now like to add my own little voice to all the other angry statements being thrown around about this video: It is supposed to be a joke, apparently. But as DK points out, it isn't funny. Not even in a bad taste sort of a way. It is simple, stupid and offensive. It's crass. It is, at best, a massive misjudgment on the part of the 10:10 campaign. But I'd also agree with Mr Eugenides - I don't quite believe this is an incitement to murder, and anyone who genuinely takes it as such is getting a little hysterical. However, for me this is very revealing of the mindset of many people involved in the environmental movement. They have become convinced that they have found a "truth" - that the survival of the human race is dependent on pursuing the policies they back. And this is not something that is open to debate anymore - what they believe in is the truth. Those who don't agree aren't equal parties in a debate. They are wrong. Worse, they are being obstructive in the creation of a better tomorrow. And, as this video shows, they are lacklustre, lazy people who just can't be bothered to help build a utopia and avoid future dystopia. Hell, you wouldn't miss them if someone in authority blew them up. Of course, it isn't just the environmentalists who fall foul of this sort of thinking. Pretty much anyone who has discovered the truth starts to believe that those who oppose them are a little less than human. That's how Stalinism came into being. That's how the nightmare of the Khmer Rouge came about. And so on. And that's what environmentalists have to avoid. Those who oppose them aren't doing so because they are bad in some way - they do it because they are not convinced by the evidence and/or the suggested policies to change the world. Which is the point of plurality, democracy and debate. If you want to silence people, then win them over through talking with them. Because whatever this video was trying to achieve (and I genuinely don't know what that was), it has done nothing other than further alienate me from their cause. posted by The Nameless Libertarian @ 5:17 PM At 6:59 PM , TonyF said...

Global Warming?

Not that long ago (Geologically speaking) Where I am sitting was a warm shallow sea. Not that long afterwards, less than 100 miles north of me, was the edge of the Ice sheet. The planet warms, it cools, get over it.

However, it still doesn't pay to shit in your own water supply, so being environmentally friendly is sensible for other reasons.

At 7:53 PM ,

The Nameless Libertarian said...

However, it still doesn't pay to shit in your own water supply, so being environmentally friendly is sensible for other reasons. Well, yes - I've no problem with people telling me it makes sense to be environmentally friendly because it makes the world a more pleasant place. However, when they tell me I have to believe in Climate Change or be blown up as some sort of species traitor, well, I've got to take issue with them. Humans do have an impact on the environment. It just isn't the world-destroying impact that the environmentalists make it out to be.

Richard Curtis's snuff movie: A satire? A canny marketing strategy? I don't think so
By James Delingpole Politics Last updated: October 2nd, 2010 Richard Curtiss eco-fascist snuff movie was a disaster for the green movement, I think we can all agree. Well, not quite all of us to judge by one or two bizarre comments and newspaper responses Ive seen today. Lets just dispense with a few of them. 1. It was an internet hit. Yes, it surely was. In much the same way that the Jonathan Ross/Russell Brand Sachsgate tapes were a hit or the Paris Hilton sex tapes were a hit or Britney Spears shaving all her hair off was a hit. Not all publicity is good publicity. Duh. 2. It was all part of Richard Curtiss cunning plan. Yeah right. Because, of course see above the 10:10 campaign really wanted everybody screaming, even green commenters on the Guardians pages, about what a despicably misguided exercise it was to show people who dont being believe in Man Made Global Warming being blown to smithereens like Islamist suicide bomb victims. Yes, thats just the way to win over the undecided to your cause: threats, bullying and emotional blackmail. 3. Richard Curtis is a secret denier and devised the project as satire. I think the psychological term for this is projection. Curtis has scripted many good films over the years well, one, anyway plus of course he co-wrote Blackadder. Ergo, in some peoples minds, a guy who can be so funny could never actually have been responsible for such car-crash propaganda without meaning it to be car-crash propaganda. Well, Im sorry Curtis fans, but this doesnt wash. As exhibit a) I present The Girl In The Cafe whose liberal, anti-capitalist, anti-globalist sentiments were painfully of a piece with the kind of Weltanschauung exhibited in No Pressure and as b) I offer 4. below.

4. This was an unfortunate accident. It isnt representative of the green movement. Er, actually, tragically, this is exactly how the green movement thinks. I refer you to my piece James Lee is Al Gore is Prince Charles is the Unabomber. 5. Its actually funny and people who dont think so havent got a sense of humour. Hmm. Lets see what Thegavster has to say about this on the previous post. I think he makes the point rather well: So the killing of people who do not subscribe to the 10:10 campaign is funny. Its funny to kill children in a classroom? Its funny to kill people who have a different opinion? What sort of people find that funny? If the people who pressed the button were dressed in Nazi uniforms, would it still be funny? Would those who made this video and who find this funny still find it funny if a similar video was produced showing supporters of the campaign being blown up? Would the video still be funny if it was made by animal rights activists and showed children and others being blown up because they didnt support animal rights campaigns? Would a similar video be funny if made by Islamic extremists and showed non-Muslim children being blown up? Would it still be funny if the video showed Muslim children being blown up by that crazy Pastor in the US who wanted to burn Korans? The premise is nonsense and the people who made the video should be ashamed. Indeed, those who support this campaign commercially should be ashamed as well and stop that support. It is disgusting and outrageous. Just because you have passionate beliefs, you do not have the right to advocate the sort of behaviour defined in the video, just because you believe you are right. If its not acceptable for other groups, its not acceptable for you either. If this has done anything for me, its scared me. It warns me that these people may well advocate this sort of sanction if you dont support their cause and as such are no different from any other extremist apart from the fact that they have strong support in high places. What it has also done is made me even more determined to do everything I can to stop them. In short it has actually had the opposite affect that they had hoped. Come on people, its time we stood up and did something about this plague! 3 Oct 2010

Was it a Double Bluff?

Longrider @ 12:29 Theres been plenty of coverage in the land of blog on the 10:10 video short that was rapidly withdrawn. That it has all gone tits up is amusing to those of us who do not worship at the feet of Gaia. On the face of it, the greenies have committed a massive faux pas, shooting themselves in both feet. But, have they? One suggestion made (and I dont recall where, exactly) is that the whole thing was a double bluff. That the film was deliberately awful and that removing it was planned all along as part of an inverse marketing strategy. That it has gone viral achieves the ultimate aim; to get everyone talking about the campaign. Well, that objective was certainly achieved. And, the 10:10 people deny the double bluff. I cant help wondering though if that isnt a double bluff as well. I mean, if it was planned that way all along, the denials would also have been planned. They would say that, wouldnt they, to coin a clich.

As for the film itself, it was supposed to be funny, apparently. Now, I consider my own humour to be fairly well developed if somewhat on the dry side but I didnt find it funny. Not even a slight twitch of the smile muscles. Maybe its just me but I have never found blowing people up amusing wheres the wit? Wheres the clever wordplay? Wheres the sharp observation? Where is the absurdity? Blunt instruments do not make good comedy. Sorry, but on the humour scale, it registered in multiple minus figures. It was about as unfunny as Two pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps or the execrable Inbetweeners. Which, I guess, tells us much about Richard Curtis. Im beginning to suspect that Blackadder was an exception rather than the rule. So, in summary, a climate campaign group produced a dreadful film that failed in its core purpose and failed in any way to be funny. The question, then, is did we fall for a massive con-trick and are they giggling at our gullibility?

They want your children

Oct 3rd, 2010 by CountingCats. A post by Thomas Fuller at WUWT on the 1010 offering. I freely lift chunks to share here: The film did not upset me physically or emotionally. My reaction was mental () What disgusts me first is its target. The video is meant for the young () What are they saying? That its okay to ostracize, bully and dismiss those who dont agree that climate change is uber alles (Oops! Godwin alert, Godwin alert) and that skeptics or the children of skeptics are fair game for whatever. there is a special place in hell reserved for those whose intent it is to legitimize the cruelty of children towards each other based on what has evidently become a religious belief. Joe Romm and Bill McKibben have already announced they are Shocked! Shocked! that gambling is going on in their casino and that their perpetual campaign of invective and calumny has produced people who actually believe them and hate skeptics. So I guess its no harm, no foul. Just as it was not their fault when a disturbed environmentalist took hostages at the Discover Channel headquarters, just as when the WWF made an ad showing planes flying into New York skyscrapers, just as when a Greenpeace blogger told skeptics the world over that we know where you live. And as Anthony Watts knows full well, they also know where you work. But none of this is the fault of those who whip up the frenzy and the furor of those stupid enough to believe their hyperbole, enough to do something vicious, cruel, stupid or illegal. Both William Golding (Lord of the Flies) and J.M. Barrie (Peter Pan) knew full well that children need no help in being cruel. But this gives them license and legitimacy. And for that, Joe and Bill, I do hold you responsible. You sent the message firstit took years for 10:10 to make it explicit. Next step is to name and shame the enablers of the 1010 ecothugs. Get them where it really hurts, in the pocket.

Courtesy of Wikipedia:

Support
The campaign has attracted the support of major and diverse public figures and organisations, described by the Guardian as from a "cross-section" of UK society.[6][7] On 18 October 2009, the campaign had 35,000 individual supporters, 1,200 businesses and 850 other bodies including schools and hospitals.[8][9] There had also been heavy media coverage around the launch date,[10] and there have been regular articles about the campaigns progress published by The Guardian.[11]

Politicians
The entire British cabinet, consisting of Gordon Brown and his senior ministers, committed to reduce their personal emissions by 10% in 2010,[12] with David Cameron, the Conservative front bench, and Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg pledging equal support to the cause.[13] Since the Party conference season in 2009 when Nick Clegg and Ed Milliband urged the members of the Liberal Democrats and Labour party respectively to commit to the 10:10 cause[14][15], support within the political sphere has been steadily growing and to date over 150Members of Parliament (MPs) have signed up. 10:10 also counts amongst its supporters many local councils, three British Embassies, nine Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs) and five Members of the European Parliament (MEPs). In December 2009, City of Edinburgh Council became the 100th council to sign up.[16] On October 21, 2009 the Liberal Democrats put an Opposition Day motion before the House of Commons that sought to commit the entire UK government and public sector to the 10:10 campaign[17]. The motion was defeated by 297 votes to 226 under heavy pressure from the government, but an amendment was passed that committed an additional 20m to help government departments to further reduce their emissions[18].

Celebrities
Dozens of high-profile individuals have signed up to the scheme. They include chefs Delia Smith and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, fashion designers Vivienne Westwood and Stella McCartney,[19] TV & radio presenters Kevin McCloud and Sara Cox, writers Ian McEwan, Alain de Botton, Carol Ann Duffy and Simon Armitage, artist Anish Kapoor, comedian Rory Bremner,[19] and actors Peter Capaldi,[20]Samantha Morton and Colin Firth.[21] Individuals involved in politics who support 10:10 include climate change expert Nicholas Stern, former London mayor Ken Livingstone,[22]leading sociologist Anthony Giddens, Liberty director Shami Chakrabarti, socialite and environmentalist Zac Goldsmith, and established campaigner Peter Tatchell.[21]

Educational bodies
The 350[19] educational institutions signed up consist of large variety of groups, including primary schools and students unions, as well as names such as Kings College London,[23][24], the University of Edinburgh,[25][26], the University of Liverpool[27], the University of Westminster[28], the Science Museum[6] and the Tate Modern art gallery.[23]

Companies

These include Royal Mail,[29] Microsoft,[30] Tottenham Hotspur football club[23], the British Medical Journal,[31], O2[20], the FTSE-100 listed insurance company Aviva[20] and commercial property company Land Securities,[20] B&Q,[30], Bafta,[32] Adidas,[19] and Pret A Manger,[30]. In October 2009, WorldAccent Translation became the 1010th business to sign up.[33] The Guardian newspaper has covered 10:10 extensively and is engaged in a special partnership with the scheme.[34]

Other organisations
These include several NHS trusts,[23] Cheshire Police Constabulary,[7] the Womens Institute[6] the government Environment Agencywatchdog,[19] and the British Fashion Council.[21] Faith groups have shown interest in the campaign, with the entire Methodist Church of Great Britain in support,[35] and Quakers in Britain encouraging its members to sign up "as a matter of urgency".[36]

'Anyone who thought Love Actually was a bit crap please leave'
By James Delingpole Politics Last updated: October 5th, 2010

"Und Kinder you vill never guess what happens next...." Its here. The long awaited and entirely inevitable Downfall parody of the Richard Curtis No Pressure snuff video. And its a good un. (H/T Eugenia Tweed) My favourite line: I even included the Jewish team Tottenham Hotspur in the film and still they accuse me of Nazi practices. While were on the subject, I highly recommend this analysis of the 10:10 debacle from Germany, courtesy of classical liberal thinker Steffen Hentrich. (H/T Ravenscar)

Reaction From Germany (The Sane Part)

By P Gosselin on 5. Oktober 2010

Steffen Hentrich of the Liberal Institute of the Friedrich-Naumann-Foundtaion for Freedom Steffen Hentrich of the Liberal Institute at the Friedrich-Naumann-Foundation for Liberty blasted the 10:10 No Pressure clip, calling it a manual for climate terrorism. Read here in German. Here the term Liberal is the (so-called classic liberal, and not to be confused with the kind one finds in the USA. He warns that the windmills turning in the wind and shiny solar panels on roofs are the harmless stage for a not-to-be excluded eco-dictatorship that would have zero respect for humanity. Here are some excerpts of his comments I translated in English: What do we do with people who do not wish to join in the climate protection movement propagated upon us by environmental activists and politicians? You just blow them up and justify it by claiming these few non-conformists are nothing when compared to the 300,000 people who have supposedly already died because of climate change so far. For this number there is no scientific basis, just climate models. Just 65 years after the end of National Socialism, under whose dehumanizing ideology millions of human beings were murdered in the most brutal manner, and 21 years after the fall of communism, where its collective Weltanschauung claimed just as many lives, and only 9 years since the attacks on the WTC, which claimed thousands of lives because of religious fanaticism, a radical environmental movement today does not even bother to hide how it would like to deal with people who do not agree with its end of the world scenarios and prefer to opt out of its simplistic world rescue program. Unfortunately the German mainstream media, big cheerleaders of the climate protection madness, have been completely silent thus far. Surely they are shocked by the clips content and are keeping a low profile. Theyve had three days now. Shame shame. Where is that model of democracy and human rights which Germany has been since the end of WWII? Tragically many have been just too caught up in the eco-zealotry.

Steffen Hentrich in one of the few who has stood up and publicly denounced the clip and its message in Germany. (He is also a regular contributor to the online Freie Welt daily.)

Sony disassociate themselves from 10:10

By ktwop

I just received the following email from Nick Sharples, Sony Europes Director of Communications: Dear Mr. Pillai, Thank you for your email concerning the video released by the 10:10 climate change campaign group. Sony has supported the 10:10 climate change campaign because we share its objective to reduce carbon emissions. However, we strongly condemn the No Pressure video which was conceived, produced and released by 10:10 entirely without the knowledge or involvement of Sony. The company considers the video to be ill-conceived and in extremely bad taste. We also believe the video risks undermining the work of the many thousands of members of the public, schools and universities, local authorities and many businesses, of which Sony is one, who support the longterm aims of the 10:10 movement and who are actively working towards the reduction of carbon emissions. As a result we have taken the decision to disassociate ourselves from 10:10 at this time. In our press statement we will be posting tomorrow morning we reaffirm our ongoing commitment to the reduction of global carbon emissions as part of our Road to Zero environmental plan. Yours sincerely, Nick Nick Sharples Director of Corporate Communications Sony Europe The Heights, Weybridge Surrey, KT13 0XW nick.sharples@eu.sony.com +44 (0)7786 114 870 (Mobile) +44(0)1932 816 828 (Office)

Fallibility

from Uncle Bill's Canadian blog by Bill Sticker Was commenting on this thread of James Delingpoles blog on the importance of lobbying one's elected representative. I made comment as follows; Am awaiting reply from letters to MP and MEP's asking for a moratorium on public funding to ActionAid, Carbon Trust etcetera, who gave the majority of funding for the offending 10:10 video. Pending of course a full public enquiry. Failure of response will not be deemed acceptable. It goes without saying that the more people that lobby their elected representatives the better. After all, they need communication from us, or how else are they to know the public mind? To which I received this reply from a gentleman styling himself ScouseBilly "how else are they to know the public mind? " By controlling/managing it through compliant media. "Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger." ~Herman Gring at the Nuremberg trials P.S. I still applaud you, Bill and gave a recommend. I try normally not to get sucked into this sort of forum debate, but felt minded to reply as follows; Thank you. However, if our 'leaders' are taking us down the road to perdition, we should be telling them to stop, now. As loudly as possible. If we do not, then we deserve the fallout. As for 'controlling the public mind'? Really. Some of these people need reminding which side of bed to get out of in the morning. They are just as capable as the rest of us of wandering around with their flies undone or skirt tucked into their knickers. Lets face it; we're all still little more than hyper-evolved monkeys who can remember which end of a stick to grab. Our leaders are drawn from the same stock, and should therefore not be considered superior beings. They want power and prestige, but need reminding every so often that they have their metaphorical arses out of their trousers about this 'CO2=Climate Change' thing. Even in these economically straitened time, with the public purse in such deep debt that the figurative Bailiffs aren't always at the door, they've moved in; money is still being pissed up the wall at a waste of public time and energy. It is high time the public purse strings on the political vanity item of man made climate change were severed. The Harper Administration of Canada appears to understand this, and is wisely sitting on the bleachers on this issue until better proofs are available (or not). I wish I could say the same about our Provinces Premier and his team.

On the whole, it's down to John Q Public to read the media, dismiss the greater part as nonsense, and properly research an issue for themselves. Then to hassle their duly appointeds to get on with the job the taxpayer pays them to. Representing them, not merely special interest groups, 'activists', and big business. My point is; if people don't speak up, no bugger is going to do it for them.

Joe Romm Inadvertently Shows How the 10:10 Film Got Made
from Climate Skeptic by admin It was good to see Joe Romm denounce the 10:10 film for the creepy propaganda piece that it is. But in his explanation, he inadvertently explains exactly the mindset that creates such disasters. He writes in part (emphasis added) None of this excuses that disgusting video. But the difference is that those who are trying to preserve a livable climate and hence the health and well-being of our children and billions of people this century quickly denounce the few offensive over-reaches of those who claim to share our goals but those trying to destroy a livable climate, well, for them lies and hate speech are the modus operandi, so such behavior is not only tolerated, but encouraged. Note the statement for those trying to destroy a livable climate. Does he really think anyone, including skeptics like myself or Anthony Watt (who he specifically calls out) is trying to destroy a livable climate? By using the word trying, he is assigning a motivation. Skeptics, to him, are not working from different assumptions or readings of the science. They say what they say because they are motivated to destroy the climate. I suppose I could play the same game, and say that through CO2 controls Romm is trying to impoverish billions of poor people in lesser developed countries by halting development, but I dont think that is really his motive, and it would be grossly unfair for me to write. I think poverty is an outcome of what he advocates, just as he thinks an unlivable climate is an outcome of what I advocate, but I can distinguish between motives and assumptions, but he apparently cannot. This attitude is EXACTLY what causes unfortunate actions like the making of the 10:10 video it is only a small step from believing, as Romm says he does, that skeptics are trying to destroy a liveable climate to making a movie that jokes about killing them all (or, to be frank, to feeling justified in acts of eco-terrorism). Is anyone else getting tired of this working definition that hate speech is any speech by people who disagree with me, because I have the best interest of humanity in mind so clearly those who oppose me hate the human race? I encourage you to watch my climate video and decide if folks like me are trying to thoughtfully decipher nature or are engaging in hate speech. I guess it is unsurprising that Joe Romm goes to the kindergarten argument of he started it, arguing that the video is just the flip side of the stuff skeptics are doing all the time. I am not sure exactly what comparable films skeptics have produced that are similar, and the only example he can cite is Anthony Watts blog post comments on the shooting of an eco-terrorist. I did not even go back and look at Watts comments, but I generally think that lots of people are too gleeful when suspected criminals, who are innocent before the law, are gunned down by police. Never-the-less, its seems a stretch to equate the offhand comments in real time of an independent blogger with a film involving probably a hundred people (including those who commissioned it in

the 10:10 organization), commissioned in an official and thoughtful act (after all this had to be months in the works), and funded in part by the British government. I say stupid things in real time that I later wish I had moderated or not said at all. That kind of communications mistake is very very different order of magnitude from a two month project involving scores of people and presumably multiple reviews by a prominent organization. (Update: Iowahawk makes this latter point about the number of people who were involved in this movie and reviewed it without a peep of protest here).

NY Times' Andrew Revkin on Eco-Snuff Film: "A Pretty Edgy Climate Campaign"
Written by Andrew Revkin, NY Times | 04 October 2010

Gillian Anderson. Image via Wikipedia

Hey, in an entertainment universe where a blood-soaked psychopath can be a hero and fleshmunching zombies can be hilarious (to me, too), whats a few exploding schoolchildren? Late last week, a British climate group released No Pressure, a mini-film aimed at rounding up new recruits to its 10:10 movement, in which people, schools, companies and other participants pledge to cut their greenhouse gas emissions 10 percent in a year. On paper, the project had everything going for it the screenwriter of Four Weddings and a Funeral and Bridget Joness Diary, music by Radiohead, on-screen talent including Gillian Anderson, a partnership with The Guardian newspaper, which got the exclusive, unveiling the video with a gushy blog post that called it attention grabbing and pretty edgy.

Dim lights Embed Embed this video on your site Attention grabbing and pretty edgy, indeed. The opening scene shows a school teacher cheerily tallying hands of those in her class agreeing to cut their carbon, then pushing a red button, bursting two naysayers like balloons filled with fruit punch. Other scenes repeat the spattery process in an office and on a soccer field. The video makes last years polar bears falling from the sky film clip fighting frequent flying look like Teletubbies.

If the goal had been to convince people that environmental campaigners have lost their minds and to provide red meat (literally) to shock radio hosts and pundits fighting curbs on greenhouse gases, it worked like a charm. Of course the goal might have been buzz more than efficacy. Too often these days, thats the online norm. They succeeded on that front. I, among many others, am forced to write about it. Congratulations. Then again, it could be a conspiracy. Perhaps the filmmakers were simply highly-paid double agents for big oil and big coal trying to undercut the global effort of the similarly named 10-10-10 campaign kicking off on Oct. 10 (the 10:10 group is one of thousands of participants in the international climate work party). If so, they certainly provided a body blow, as the lead organizer, Bill McKibben, noted on many green blogs over the weekend. In the end, the 10:10 organizers posted an unbelievably flimsy apology, expressly allowing folks to copy and distribute the film on YouTube even as they (meaninglessly) pulled it from their home page. They closed with this inexcusably flacid wink, wink line: At 10:10 were all about trying new and creative ways of getting people to take action on climate change. Unfortunately in this instance we missed the mark. Oh well, we live and learn. Onwards and upwards. The only amusing thing about this followup statement is how closely it resembles the semi-nonapology Rush Limbaugh offered his listeners last year a week after he proposed that I kill myself if I really think human population growth is bad for the planet. He actually went further, saying: Uh, I, er, Mr. Revkin, for crying out loud. Im making a point. Im not advocating death. I do not advocate death on this program. I do not advocate control over anybody elses life. I e-mailed a query about the film over the weekend to Franny Armstrong, one of the founders of the 10:10 effort and the director of the biting 2008 climate film The Age of Stupid. When I hear back, youll get an update. Blood spatter aside, No Pressure proves, beyond a doubt, that we really are living in the age of stupid. Id like to see the groups sponsors, including Sony, figure out an upside to this effort. They should either state why they continue to provide support or pull out. Ive rounded up some other reactions (including a defense) from a few folks involved in film and/or environmental communication work or analysis. You can read them below. Personally, Ive got to agree with a critique offered by a YouTube account holder who was one of many who took up the 10:10 invitation to download and repost the video in this case with the environmental groups apology superimposed on the imagery: If the same kind of video had been made about blowing up atheists, agnostics, christians, jews, muslims, whites, blacks, asians, homosexuals, left-wingers or right-wingers, it would have been met with understandable disgust; this video is a shameful display of DOUBLE STANDARDS. Heres the input from others:

Maria Luskay, a media and communications professor at my new home base, Pace University, sees a generational divide over violent imagery: Our youth are growing up in a generation of Quentin Tarantino in your face types of films. This is not alarming at all to them. They are used to seeing this on screen. The same rule applies for graphic video games. No pressure this is nothing new. I believe it will be more of a shock to adults, like myself, who believe that it is too edgy and violent and dont want to see blood and guts splattered on our TVs. But isnt that the objective of the campaign to leave an impression? Randy Olson, the creator of the Sizzle climate mock documentary and author of Dont Be Such a Scientist, sent this riff: I think the film was horribly offensive. I also think Stephen Colbert should be boycotted for making a mockery of the U.S. Congress, Jon Stewart should be punished for his unwillingness to treat serious American politics seriously, and South Park should be banned altogether. Given the desperate state of todays world more violent and filled with hatred, pain and suffering than any time in history there is simply no place for this stuff. Its time for humor to be added to the list, alongside polio and tuberculosis, as things to eradicate in our lifetime. Marshall Herskovitz, a past president of the Producers Guild of America and producer of films and TV shows including Blood Diamond and thirtysomething, is working on a campaign he describes as trying to change the conversation regarding climate change and renewable energy. Heres his view of the video: The sad spectacle of the 10:10 video is a perfect illustration of worldwide failure over the issue of climate change (not to mention the pornographication of violence which has overtaken world media in recent years). The irony of course is that the video looks like it was made by climate change deniers - not believers - as an attack on the supposed fascism of those who would mobilize society to reduce greenhouse gases. The truth is that those of us who believe we are in a planetary emergency are indeed desperate and frustrated and angry - but were not in charge, were not blowing up people, and in fact we are leaderless and ineffective. The video reflects that lack of leadership, reflects a movement if you can even call it that that cannot even articulate its own desperation. Every great movement - anti-slavery, womens suffrage, civil rights - succeeded finally because passionate people went out in public and articulated and demonstrated that passion, at risk of life and limb, over and over again. Because human beings are moved by passion, and very often persuaded by it. The deniers will deny until the moment they either stop making money from it, or they truly understand that they are dooming their children. In the meantime, the rest of us can only declare passionately what we believe, and work as hard as we can for the changes we believe are necessary. And so far we have failed at both, with the fact that someone wellmeaning could have made this video as proof of that failure. I envy the deniers, really, for they are not yet compelled to see the terrible truth: That there is no time left for us to fail.

Edward Maibach, the director of the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University: Ill admit that I find it funny, but then again, Im a sucker for British humor. Regardless, I think they used bad judgment in producing it (unless it was completely pro bono) and in posting it. Even if all of their intended audience members and other important stakeholders found it to be funny (which, apparently, they didnt), what was the point of the spot? That nearly everyone is participating in 10:10 (i.e., saving energy is a new social norm)? Surely there are better ways to make that worthy point. Tom Bowman, a consultant in climate communication: I confess that I find it funny also. It makes its point about normative behavior in a way that we used to see on Monty Pythons Flying Circus and Saturday Night Live. In the absence of message testing on this spot, perhaps the seriousness of the climate threat and ideological opposition to science findings lead us to be a little to serious about climate messaging. There is room for many voices, even for dark humor. But I do think the spot was weak in the same way so many messages are: it fails to demonstrate how absurdly easy cutting emissions by 10% really is. Plugging electronics into power strips that get turned off can probably do it. Changing all of ones light bulbs to CFLs would almost certainly do it. In other words, the relative simplicity of achieving the 10% goal really does make non-compliance look silly. Theres much more reaction out there on this film, with rare alignments of people including Roger Pielke, Jr., and Joe Romm.

Love (of no pressure) is forever having to say youre sorry

from The View From Here by hro001 As I had noted yesterday, the folks at the heretofore obscure group 10:10 responded to what might have been some unanticipated consequences with a rather pathetic excuse for an apology. To keep things straight, Im calling this their First Sorry:

Andrew Revkin at the NYT called it an unbelievably flimsy apology. Its worth noting that First Sorry was, evidently, a 10:10 team effort at least according to the signature, which reads: Franny, Lizzie, Eugenie and the whole 10:10 team

I decided to take a look at the reactions on some of the alarmist blogs. After reading First Sorry, it did not surprise me to find in one of the comments on Joe Romms blog an Oct. 1 E-mail from Franny (Armstrong) sent to all 10:10-ers which included the following: Its a fairly simple and to-the-point premise, Im sure youll agree: we celebrate everybody who is actively tackling climate change by blowing up those who arent. [emphasis added -hro] It certainly shocked me, but it didnt surprise me. You might recall that in my post yesterday, I had speculated: Or did they know there was a damn good chance that it wasnt going to fly, but that the end (lots of PR for an otherwise relatively obscure endeavour and, of course, bad PR is just as good as good PR) justified the means? In light of this, I found another non-surprising shocker in Frannys E-mail. Her first paragraph was an over-the-top gloat that the mini-movie could be found on the Guardian websites front-page; but she concluded this paragraph by saying: (If its off the Guardian by the time you get this message, you can watch at: ) In a paragraph that she began with I am blown away, pun intended, Franny wrote: Please, please, please, please forward to as many friends and pretend facebook friends as thats by far our best chance of going viral Hmmmm . If its off the Guardian? pretend facebook friends? best chance of going viral? Ends and means, anyone?! Notwithstanding the claims of the mini-movies defenders and apologists and the content of First Sorry rather conspicuous by its absence in Frannys E-mail, is any mention of humour or satire. In a subsequent post today, Revkin notes that Climate Group Regrets Shock Film Tactic (So Does Sony). Sonys message indicates that: we have taken the decision to disassociate ourselves from 10:10 at this time. On the 10:10 side, we have Second Sorry Take 1 which begins:

(undated -hro) Last week, 10:10 made available a short film. Following the initial reaction to the film we removed it from our website and issued an apology on Friday 2 October (sic).

Subsequently there has been negative comment about the film, particularly on blogs, and concern from others working hard to build support for action on climate change. We are very sorry if this has distracted from their efforts. We are also sorry to our corporate sponsors, delivery partners and board members, who have been implicated in this situation despite having no involvement in the films production or release. We will learn from this mistake.[...] YMMV, but Second Sorry Take 1 seems like a rather haughty and hasty paste to me. But sometime between Revkins post and my visit to the 10:10 site (about 3 hours ago) Harvey evidently decided to create Second Sorry Take 2, which begins as follows:

As you may have heard, last week, 10:10 made a mistake by releasing a short film about cutting carbon which was supposed to be humourous but in the event upset a lot of people. We quickly realised that we had made a serious mistake and took it down from our website within hours. We also issued a statement apologising but there has subsequently been quite a lot of negative comment, particularly on blogs, and understandable concern from others working hard to build support for action on climate change. [emphasis added -hro] Oh, look, ma! No sign of No Pressure. Im not sure if the medium can keep up with their ever-changing message. A little more humility in Sorry Two Take 2, dont you think? Considering that its taken them from Oct. 1 to Oct. 4 to realize [they] had made a serious mistake Im not sure that quickly is the adverb I would have chosen to modify realize. But perhaps from their perspective, the downfall was happening much faster than they thought. Who knows, perhaps they were under too much pressure from the unanticipated consequences that stem from the fact that there are conditions in our society and culture that [they] just didnt take into consideration in [their] planning.

Greenpeace and the Violent Video

October 5, 2010

Ive written previously about how Greenpeace is a huge corporate outfit these days. They dont rent leaky fishing boats anymore. Instead they sail around in $22-million custom-built yachts. Which means they have a lot to lose, a lot of jobs to protect. It also means they can afford the very best public relations advice. So youd expect them to have been prepared when the Daily Caller got in touch, seeking their comment on the lurid video produced by the 10:10 Campaign. You know, the one that shows people who are insufficiently enthusiastic about reducing their carbon footprint being summarily executed. In fairness to Greenpeace, other environmental groups have so far stayed mum. The Natural Resources Defense Council, Earthjustice, Friends of the Earth, the Sierra Club, and the Environmental Defense Fund none of these rushed to denounce this 4-minute massacre when the Daily Caller offered them the opportunity. Which tells us something right there. If you know anyone who makes a monthly donation to these organizations, perhaps its time they reconsidered. But I really did expect more from Greenpeace. I mean, how much lamer could their response have been? Spokesperson Jane Kochersperger wants us to believe that the only people who are concerned about this video are those in the pay of big oil. We are all, apparently, cashing monthly cheques. Why else would we even be discussing this? In her words: As an organization committed to non-violence, I think you can imagine how Greenpeace views this material. At this time, the only people promoting the material are climate skeptics and think tanks funded by corporations known for lobbying against climate change legislation. Actually, Im not so certain that I know anymore how Greenpeace views this material. Based on the content of the No Pressure video, my understanding of environmental thinking is clearly behind the times. Why the guessing game? Why doesnt Kochersperger just tell us how Greenpeace feels? Why doesnt she, as does Sony (formerly known as a 10:10 Campaign corporate sponsor) say something like: we strongly condemn the No Pressure videoThe company considers the video to be ill-conceived and in extremely bad taste. Isnt in fascinating that a big bad corporation like Sony appreciates how offensive this video is yet the holier-than-thous at Greenpeace apparently dont? And, for the record, Ive been following this story closely since it broke a few days ago. Ive read a lot of commentary. None of it, to my knowledge, has been in any way connected to any think tank. Whatever Greenpeace is paying its PR people, it should demand a refund. This conspiracy-bythink-tank narrative is old. Its ragged. It deserves a decent burial. Do they really have no other response? At a moment in which ordinary people need to be assured that environmentalists are sane and sensible, is this really the best Greenpeace can do?

Scott Ramsdell says: October 4, 2010 at 6:19 pm People have what seems to me a very odd trait: we follow popularity.

We care what actors think. A movie becomes popular because it is well written, well produced, well advertised, well edited, well cast, and well acted. We as a group only seem to give accolades to the actor/actress and make them a star and subsequently give more value to their opinions, even though they didnt do more for the film than the other professionals involved. They were cast for a well written part which was directed and marketed well, yet we elevate only them to worship status. We care what sports stars think. The opinions of people born with the genetic predisposition for athleticism who are coached well and work hard are afforded more credibility than the opinions of others. Actors/actresses and athletes can sell a message. Its really odd to me that this is the case. Most of us just seem geared to unquestionably following those who appear prominent to us. We collectively dont seem able to differentiate between the expertise someone has and doesnt have. Case in point: using Julian Anderson as the skeptic in this tasteless video. The marketers knew the message they were selling: Agent Scully was the skeptic and it turns out she was wrong, Moulder was right all along, and bam! she gets blown up for being a skeptic. She has become a message, an advertisement simply because weve seen her on TV. Why should we care what Julian Anderson thinks about CO2? Obviously she supports the AGW scare or she wouldnt be in the video, but why should we care? I would wager that a far smaller proportion of actors/actresses and athletes have a considered opinion on AGW than the common person. Ive seen enough Leno/Letterman/Stewart interviews to recognize that stars probably didnt pay much attention in school as they were simply seeking attention instead. I understand that arguing from the specific to the general is illogical, and Im not doing that with the Scully reference above. Im simply illustrating an example of how so many seem to follow beliefs/individuals simply because they are known and popular, instead of because of what they do, who they are, or the merits of the belief. We need Steve McIntyre and Anthony Watts billboards across the country. I am not hopeful for our societies ability to properly reason its way past the marketing message of AGW. I cannot recall the last time a high schooler in a cashier position was able to make change without assistance from the register. Theres no way those kiddos who cant count to/subtract from 100 will reason through the AGW hype, and they collectively out number, and therefore will out vote, us. Most people just simply do not stop and think. So many computer viruses/worms are spread by simply sending an email or a tweet saying look what So-And-So has done now. We seem geared to following popularity, and I dont get it. Unfortunately, AGW is popular. Gurgeh says: October 4, 2010 at 6:19 pm I sent this to Ms. Harvey a few minutes ago: Dear Ms. Harvey,

Your organisation needs to be radically overhauled. Whoever commissioned this appalling video needs to be fired. Producing such an evil and extreme video, then attempting to blame the negative reaction on sense of humour failures by people who objected is the lowest of the low. This video directly threatened children; tow the line on CO2 or get killed. What sort of organisation are you to put out such a horrific message. The UK Police should be looking at prosecuting you for incitement to violence. I live in the Philippines, a third world country, and work for an educational charity. All around me I see the effects of rampant growth without thought, the destruction of natural habitats, the appalling poverty in which the majority live, the systemic corruption. I have taught my children that conservation and recycling are essential. Organisations such as yours, funded by the taxpayers and large corporations should focus on education about all conservation issues, not just an unproven causality that CO2 causes global warming. In disgust, Chris Boughton

Environmental Endgame
Written by Matt Purple, American Spectator | 05 October 2010

"Increasingly it seems facts aren't necessary," Crichton said (pictured), "because the tenets of environmentalism are all about belief. It's about whether you are going to be a sinner, or saved." I have an idea for a commercial. A teacher is speaking to a class of students about how the United States is in grave danger. She warns her young charges that spending is out of control, government has become too big, and bureaucrats have too much power. She lectures that the government has expanded far beyond its constraints which are laid out in the Constitution. She then asks the students if they will join the local Tea Party and fight to restore America to its founding principles. All the little tykes -- first or second graders -- raise their hands, except for two. The teacher reassures the dissenters that this is okay. "No pressure," she says. She then presses a red button on her desk. The two children explode in a red flash, splashing gore on the other horrified students. The apathetic teacher then starts assigning homework. Political advertising at its finest, wouldn't you agree?

Actually, if I ever even suggested such a commercial for the Tea Party (let alone actually made one), I'd be rightly branded a sociopath. The media would devote wall-to-wall coverage to the commercial for six months. Think Progress would try to trace my funding back to the Koch brothers. The Southern Poverty Law Center would declare the Tea Party a hate group. Keith Olbermann would drive the point home by literally exploding on air. But almost the exact same commercial was released by the 10:10 Global environmentalist group, murdered children and all. The only difference was that the homicidal teacher hit the detonate button after two children were reluctant to cut their carbon emissions. The four-minute piece went on to show several corporate workers, a soccer player, and a radio host played by Gillian Anderson (of X-Files fame) meeting the same grisly demise. The final shot refers viewers to 10:10's website while streaks of blood and Anderson's eyeballs gush down the screen. It's perhaps the darkest, vilest, most disturbing political ad ever concocted. Incredibly, it was produced for 10:10 by Richard Curtis, the British comedy writer behind legendary shows like Blackadder and Mr. Bean. Curtis apparently believed that exploding children would be a real kneeslapper. The rest of the civilized world disagreed. Within hours of the video's release, frantic greenies were trying to yank it off YouTube as the conservative blogosphere reacted with disgust. Ed Morrissey called it "the dumbest most self-defeating campaign ad ever." It's not like 10:10 Global is some fringe eco-terrorist group. They're a worldwide campaign funded by big-name donors like Sony and Kyocera. They've already extracted a promise from Britain's Conservative government to reduce its carbon output by 10% in one year. Hundreds of businesses, colleges, and schools have pledged to do the same. That makes 10:10 a big player on the environmentalist team. And yet they managed to produce this splatterfilm dreck. It would have been fascinating to be a fly on the wall during that meeting. Say Frank, you know what would make people like us more? Let's blow up children who disagree with us and then laugh about it. All this time I've been worried that climate hysterics were a savvy and well-organized intellectual machine. Take heart, doubters! If this ad is any indication, our opponents make up the most dithering collection of socially maladjusted morons ever assembled on the very planet they're trying to save. As The American Spectator reported on Friday, 10:10 reacted to the controversy by claiming they'd "missed the mark" in their attempt at humor. In an e-mail to Mark Morano, the group noted that the commercial "was intended for a British audience." We Americans lacked the perceptive wit needed to truly understand their message. Apparently the same British sense of humor that produced Monty Python, Keeping Up Appearances, and The Thick of It has now been reduced to belly-laughing at exploding youngsters. Except, of course, the Brits condemned 10:10's macabre skit with the same ferocity as their acrossthe-pond neighbors, particularly Telegraph columnist James Delingpole who popularized the story. It's a shame Dr. Michael Crichton isn't around to see all this. Crichton, the author of countless brilliant techno-thriller novels and a scientific genius in his own right, gave a groundbreaking speech in 2003 in which he claimed environmentalism was a fundamentalist religion. (Crichton is one of those recalcitrants who would have been blown to bits in the 10:10 ad.) For environmentalists, Crichton claimed, there is an impending apocalypse and sustainability is the only way to achieve salvation. "Increasingly it seems facts aren't necessary," Crichton said, "because the tenets of environmentalism are all about belief. It's about whether you are going to be a sinner, or saved.

Whether you are going to be one of the people on the side of salvation, or on the side of doom. Whether you are going to be one of us, or one of them." For true green believers, those who question anthropogenic global warming are "them" -- the apostates. Thanks to these doubters who refuse to shop with cloth bags, the environmental apocalypse draws ever closer. So why not detonate them in a gory mess? As Franny Armstrong, founder of 10:10, said, "We 'killed' five people to make No Pressure [the title of the commercial] -a mere blip compared to the 300,000 real people who now die each year from climate change." It's the same religious zeal that drives John Holdren, the most powerful environmentalist in the world and Barack Obama's climate advisor. Holdren co-authored a book with spectacularly discredited population hysteric Paul Ehrlich in which he called for the world to be depopulated. Among Holdren's solutions were forced abortions and compulsory sterilizations for women. Lives and liberties were both expendable to stop the coming apocalypse. It's why progressives universally refer to those who question global warming as "climate deniers." We're not just offering a different opinion on a scientific issue. We're denying a fundamental truth, like the Holocaust or the resurrection. It's why hacked e-mails from East Anglia University showed climate scientists trying to blackball those who questioned climate change. Dissenting thought is heretical and cannot be tolerated. Now, thanks to the public relations imbeciles over at 10:10 Global, we have our greatest proof yet that radical environmentalism is a religion. The gory deaths in the commercial were only secondarily an attempt at humor. They were primarily a masturbatory fantasy for the acolytes of environmentalism. As 10:10 admitted (before the outrage), "It's a fairly simple and to-the-point premise, I'm sure you'll agree: we celebrate everybody who is actively tackling climate change by blowing up those who aren't." Among the deniers, there would be great wailing and gnashing of teeth, no doubt. Fortunately, there's a solution for we heathens. For October 10, 10:10 is planning a day of global climate action that will supposedly be held in 140 countries. Want to protest their evil ad? This Sunday, leave your car idling in the driveway. Crank your heat up before you leave the house. Grab a couple of aerosol cans and point them skywards. Don't think of it as destroying Mother Earth. The earth will be just fine. Think of it as an act of protest against Mother Church.

Tuesday, 5 October 2010

In a Broken Green.
Okay, really obscure reference in the title there. Anyone old enough to know it? The 10:10 video has certainly publicised their cause. Blowing up people who disagree and calling it 'funny' has gone down a storm in America and in Russia, where they have also experienced real-life blowing up of people who didn't agree with some other people who believed they had the Only True Way. In fact, most of the world has experienced something similar. I wonder how it's received in Madrid or Baghdad? I'd like to dare Richard Curtis to travel to anywhere that's been bombed in living memory and declare that callously blowing up people who don't agree with him is 'funny'. Not even Bin Laden, who has made a name for himself doing the same thing, would call it 'funny'.

The whole world is now thinking 'So that's what these greenies are really like. Nastier, colder and more vicious than any terrorist group'. What a PR coup for Green October, the latest and most unremittingly evil terror to stalk the world since a young Vlad the Impaler had an argument with his neighbour over the positioning of his runner-bean canes. You'd think that other greenie gangs would look at the result and think 'Hmm, threatening to kill them and their children is not a good approach. They don't seem to like that idea at all, for some reason.' You'd think they'd go away and consider an entirely different approach, wouldn't you? And yet it is a recurring theme. It seems it's the only approach they have. Climate change is now a massive gravy train for a lot of people. It's changed all right. It used to be 'the new ice age', then it was 'global warming' and when that didn't happen it became the much more generic 'climate change'. That way they can switch between warming and cooling in line with the earth's natural cycles and claim both effects are caused by the same thing. All of them target children because children haven't yet become cynical enough to realise that not every earnest nutcase is working for their good. There are a lot of people making a lot of money out of the impressionable youth and out of a lot of gullible adults too. Those people will fight to keep their easy income and their personal empire of acolytes and adoring fans. In the process they have made science into a joke and glorified terrorism but none of that matters to them. They just want their own Lear jet. Their acolytes never question the huge houses and flight patterns of their masters. Never. When you look closely at the measures involved you'll find they make no sense. Take the ecobulbs, which are full of mercury vapour and release this toxic vapour if broken. A few years back, mercury thermometers were withdrawn from laboratories in case they broke. A little of the mercury might vapourise and it would be almost as bad as having fillings in your teeth. In an eco-bulb, it's all vapour, and it's all in the air as soon as it breaks. One is banned and the other encouraged. Unlike the glass-and-metal filament bulbs, these eco-bulbs consist of a huge hunk of additional plastic (which is made from oil, eco-kids) containing the starter circuitry. Sure, they use less electricity, but their production and disposal blasts any 'carbon savings' from that right out of the water. While filament bulbs could be made without using oil, the eco-bulbs are made of oil. Without oil there can be no eco-bulbs, but there could still be filament bulbs. They aren't about saving the planet. They are about making money for eco-bulb producers and those they sponsor. They don't really last as long as advertised either. They might still produce some light after a few years but the light output declines to the point where the bulb is worthless long before the day it fails to light at all. You'll throw them out before they're finished but you can't call in that 'ten year guarantee' because they haven't failed to light. Oh, and getting rid of them isn't so easy. They are far too dangerous to be put in the bin. Rather like those who promote their use. With the old bulbs, the metal would rot back into oxides and the glass would be gradually worn down naturally into the sand it came from, releasing nothing toxic on the way. The new eco-bulbs have the potential to devastate an ecosystem with plastic and mercury. Very green, eh, eco-kids? Those solar cells would have been utterly useless here for the entire summer. Even the solarpowered lights in my garden have barely lit up this year. There hasn't been a cloudless or rainless day since early June.

The windmills are anchored with a huge block of concrete, they are made of steel, they contain motors and circuitry that have to be built and maintained and they cannot work in either no-wind or too-much-wind. Oh, and if it's sunny and still, they have to be rotated so the blades don't warp which means they use power. They will never recoup the carbon emissions produced in their own creation and maintenance, never mind offsetting anything else. They are expensive and worthless lawn ornaments. In the future, the phrase 'white elephant' will be replaced with 'white windmill' and it will be even more relevant. Yet children are taught to simply believe it all. Anyone disagreeing is taught that 'deniers' are equivalent to that filthiest of society's lepers, the smoker. Using exactly the same methods. Now they are told that if they disagree (not actively fight back, merely disagree), Green Jihad will blow them into mince and the Greens will laugh about it. Why would they resort to that? Are the children, like the adults, looking out at the coldest wettest summer I can remember in my fifty years and starting to think 'hang on a minute...'? If so, it could get interesting. Posted by Leg-iron at 22:15 Smig said... The title reference isn't remotely obscure. Python Lee Jackson is slightly less well-known, but I bet the song gets played every day. They don't make them like they used to. Good post; fair points, well made. 6 October 2010 00:55 Twisted Root said... " The whole world is now thinking 'So that's what these greenies are really like. Nastier, colder and more vicious than any terrorist group'." Just so. I think that public perception had already changed prior to 'no pressure' being released. Previously they were seen as harmless cranks. It's just that they were so self absorbed that they didn't notice. The New Statesman's list of people who matter has Steve McIntyre at number 32. They can't resist a poke at him by saying, 'The influence might not be positive...' Check out the comments, over 500 mostly ripping into them for that jibe. Scroll through the other 49 'people who matter' you won't find one in double figures. Here's the link:http://www.newstatesman.com/global-issues/2010/09/climate-mcintyre-keeper 6 October 2010 01:06 Leg-iron said...

Smig - not obscure to me, or you, but I'm now at the age where I make references that draw many blank looks. Once I sent an Email to an ex-student with the title 'Parsley sage, rosemary and thyme?' We met at a conference, she asked what the hell the Email was about. I said I was simply asking if she was going to the conference we were now at. We were in Scarborough. Sometimes I'm not as transparent as I think I am. 6 October 2010 01:15 Leg-iron said... Twisted Root - the Frenzied are out in force whenever one of theirs is even remotely criticised these days. There were many in the Grauniad stating that anyone who found the 10:10 AlGoreFest unfunny were insecure and probably in need of mental floss to clean out their prejudices. It does look very much like desperation. 6 October 2010 01:18 Roue le Jour said... Got it right off, Leggy, harder one next time, please. Of course it was funny, they were only blowing up white children. The Tenten Macoute were very careful not to blow up any little black boys or little girls in headscarves. I notice that the actors in the "Go green or puppies will die" film were also white. Call me a paranoid old bastard, but I'm beginning to suspect that, like racism, eco crimes can only be committed by white people. 6 October 2010 02:46 banned said... I'm not so sure about the 'impressionalble youth' thing. I'm sure we all got to see the Don't Smoke, Don't Drink, Safe Sex and how to handle fireworks films when at school (they didn't do ElfinSafety then) but it won't havre been just me and my mates who went on to do precisely the opposite of what we were being hectored about. They closed down the entire barometer making industry for the same reason Leg-Iron, it was small but perfectly formed. Of course, no-one could actually identify a case of mercury poisoning due to barometer breakage.

Any half inteligent child holidaying in my neck of the woods might question Global Warming on the basis of 4 crap summers in a row. 6 October 2010 07:23

Tuesday, 5 October 2010

'Coolest Environmental Advertising'

They do like advertisements which threaten children in horrible ways don't they? They think it's cool. I think it's chilling. They call this poster the 'Coolest Environmental Advertising'. This is a poster used by ACT-Responsible at an exhibition in Cannes in 2009. These people will stop at nothing for their cause. Do they honestly think using children in this way encourages adults to consider their views? The only views I consider is how dangerous these people are to the future of society. Thanks to Edward for bringing this to my attention. Posted by subrosa at 16:21 Witterings From Witney said...

Anyone SR, who can dream up this type of advert or that video - the only message of which is to instill fear into peoples minds, especially those of children - is mentally sick! 5 October 2010 18:42 Edward Spalton said... I beg to disagree with my learned friend, Witterings from Witney. Neither these people nor the acts they do are "sick". They are deliberately willed and carried out by people in full possession of all their faculties. Some reprehensible acts are committed by people like these, who regard themselves as "change agents" in a cause. Some are done from purely criminal motives. Nearly all are done by people who know very well what they are doing ( in terms of the Mc Naghten rules). So they are not sick but morally culpable at all times. 5 October 2010 22:01 subrosa said... Of course they know what they're doing Edward and government is paying towards their disgraceful behaviour. Not one word from the government is there? Funding should be withdrawn immediately. If they're so sure they're right, let them raise their funds themselves. Many small charities have to do so. 5 October 2010 23:44 Leg-iron said... If that was a politician in the picture I'd sign up straight away. Then again, I suppose they realise that if they threatened to hang politicians, car engines and central heating would be running 24/7 all over the country. As Mr. S says, they aren't stupid. They are evil. 6 October 2010 01:00

British climate activist Jo Abbess thinks the eco-Fascist video is just fine
Abbess is best known for getting the BBC to censor one of their stories. She first reveals below, mockingly, that she knows the 10:10 video is ecofascist but then goes on to approve of it. That would once have been called "nailing your colours to the mast". Should we say "Heil Abbess"? No doubt she would like that. She does seem a lonely soul -- determined to take out her own unhappiness on mainstream society

Franny Armstrong Blows Reputation**

Posted on October 2nd, 2010 Jo In a critical stage of the the battle to win hearts and minds with a massive global campaign, Franny Armstrong has decided to blow up every ounce of credibility she has ever earned** by agreeing to produce what has to be the most repulsive**, sick** little film in the entire universe. Or not. Depending on whether you find the viral transmission of outrageously disgusting** YouTube movies humourous. Or not. Itll certainly get the 10:10 campaign through to people, but maybe not quite in the way she intended. Im thinking fatwas**. So much for decades of trying to convince people that the green movement isnt all about world domination through domestic fascism and mind control. Wave goodbye to all that hard work to sell the concept that eco-living is about a shared vision, building bridges and finding common ground no pressure. Eco-fascism. Its right back there on the agenda now, thanks to you, Franny**. And its going to encourage very nasty e-mails. Which we really dont need. Oh goody. Its already attracted enough complaints about violence for you to take it down from the 10:10 website. Good call, Id say :http://www.1010global.org/no-pressure ** No relationships were harmed in the making of this post its all intended to be ironic. If you didnt realise that, sorry, but it should have been really obvious. Franny Armstrong is a fabulous individual, as everybody knows, and the 10:10 campaign is ultra cool. Its a shame that this mini-movie didnt work for so many people. Were all different, and we all have a different sense of humour, and thats great. Go on, pass the YouTube link on to someone and start a conversation. No pressure. Donna Laframboise October 5th, 2010 at 13:44 Theres an entry on your blogroll called Send a Sceptic to Siberia. As someone whose family fled the former Soviet Union (you know, the folks who destroyed millions of lives by shipping people to Siberian gulags where they were worked and starved to death), youll have to forgive me. Your outrage over the 10:10 film rings a tad hollow.

The Final Solution to the Global Warming Skeptic Question

Posted by: theoptimisticconservative | October 4, 2010

Right away, I suppose you know where this is going. Ill stipulate at the outset that I do not impute to all (or even most) environmental activists a Nazist desire to blow away the other humans who disagree with their beliefs, conclusions, and prescriptions for the planet. But I do impute such a desire to the makers of the No Pressure video. In their unapologetic apology for the video, they display neither contrition for the theme of pulverizing those who disagree with them, nor understanding that its their inverted moral justification for doing so thats the problem. Its not the contrived images, per se, that ought to disturb us, its the ideology behind them. As several commenters pointed out at Eds post, the proposition of the video is Nazism. Its not like Nazism it is Nazism. This is partly because a tortured idea of environmental-ecological hygiene was a strong element in Nazism. But thats not the most important reason. The No Pressure videos proposition is Nazism because it implies a moral justification for problematic humans being exterminated. It shows the global-warming skeptics dying because they deserve it because they interfere with realization of the urgent collective idea. This is Nazism. It is the very heart of Nazism. It is why Nazism produced euthanasia of the old and disabled, why it justified ghastly eugenic experiments on problematic humans, and why it led to the Holocaust of the Jews. Note this well: Nazism did not do this by preaching in favor of euthanasia, of homicidal eugenic experimentation, or of slaughtering Jews. Nazism was always publicly coy about the implications of its vicious themes. It achieved its real outcomes, rather, by first positing a utopian condition (one with a substantial element of eco-harmony alongside the racial hygiene); by then supposing a systemic racial and political menace to it; and by demonizing and dehumanizing those who were held to be interfering with the realization of the utopia. Nazism further assumed a mystical urgency to the problem, which justified limiting the peoples freedoms, requiring certain involuntary actions and heroic sacrifices from them, and subjecting some of the people to unequal treatment. It does not matter that environmental activists who achieve public prominence and political influence today arent preaching a Final Solution. The Nazis didnt preach one either, nor did Germans vote for them in the hope of one. What the Nazis public rhetoric did was justify the Final Solution, along with the other hideous undertakings of the Nazi state. Their public rhetorical campaign laid the foundation for their moral decisions behind closed doors. The horrific decisions themselves were not featured in public communications. They were not advocated explicitly or introduced for national debate. Yet they were still adopted and executed by the national government. And this is important: in Nazi propaganda in what we would today call the Nazis information campaign there could be found no countervailing affirmation of the irreducible moral standing of the problematic humans. In word and picture, the problematic humans were portrayed solely in terms of their vile nature, as if they were a virus infecting society, and as if they should be treated as such. Im sure that most environmental radicals are not personally in favor of blowing away their critics. Most of them would repudiate such an idea with repugnance. I understand that. But their intellectual idea is an absolutist one; it does not admit of the possibility that their fellow humans are owed the right to live by their own moral lights in this matter, just because they are human. We are all human, in fact. Being human makes each of us prone to error, something the long parade of errors and unraveling assertions in the history of AGW advocacy has amply demonstrated. A moral

society does not assume error and punish preemptively; it waits to establish error, by process of law and investigative iteration; and it seeks accommodation and compromise when neither absolute truth nor incontrovertible error can be objectively established. We are assuredly living under the latter conditions today, when it comes to the AGW/Climate Change/Climate Disruption proposition. There may well be some amount of anthropogenic global warming, although theoretical certainty has persistently been greater than unassailable evidence in that regard. But skepticism that human carbon emissions are having a cataclysmic effect on the planet is as fully justified as was skepticism that Jews and other substandard humans constituted a mongrelizing infestation of a pristine, ecologically harmonious Aryan super-race. The central moral vulnerability of radical environmentalism is that it does exactly what the Nazis did: it advances arguments that would justify a wildly hubristic, fabulist attitude about our fellow humans; and it never mitigates the force of that rhetorical theme with an uncompromising commitment to the moral right of those fellow humans to their lives and liberty. This latter form of mitigation is not a given in any time or place. It cannot be left to operate on its own, because it doesnt. The moral right to life and liberty has been defined out of effective existence by every collectivist ideology and most forms of autocracy. The most epic, tragic fool is the one who suggests, in sophomoric fashion, that people ought to lighten up about fanatical ideologues and their cavalier dismissal of the moral rights of others. On this topic, there is under no circumstances an obligation to lighten up. We either acknowledge instead the obligation to be weighed down with the burden of vigilance, or we end up being ruled by people who think its funny and satisfying to imagine us being pulverized. The step from that to actually killing people, in the name of an ideological morality, has already been taken, and more than once in the last century. No one who prescribes disregarding that history can be taken seriously.

Wednesday, 6 October 2010

10:10 quote of the day
I liked this from Vox populi. I had previously preferred the term global warming fascists, but the term simply doesnt do justice to these twisted, human-hating ideologues. It appears we may end up eventually having to go to war with the sick bastards should they take over a country or two just like we did with their German predecessors; as with the National Socialists, the global warming extremists genuinely believe that their mad pseudo-scientific myths justify killing people. Fortunately, given that their tanks will be solar-powered and their cruise missiles will be launched by turbine windmills, it should take a lot less than five years to defeat them Posted by The Filthy Engineer at 19:08

The 10:10 Splattergate Round-Up

Everything you ever wanted to know about the 10:10 video, unless youre 10:10 or a radical green, in which case this would represent everything you wished never happened.

The Video
I know youve seen it, but we never pass up an opportunity to show the dark fantasy at the root of the radical green movement, courtesy of Richard 4 Beheadings & a Funeral Curtis and Franny Sage of Stupid Armstrong: . . You can see for yourself how excited Franny Armstrong was leading up to the release of No Pressure, this is her Twitter feed, giggling all the way to career Armageddon:

X-Files and No Pressure star Gillian Anderson has a track record of moonbattery.

Initial Reactions
The Guardian, who support 10:10, were initially very smug about the release of the hilarious minimovie, but you could almost hear the self-satisfied smirks melt from their faces as the comments registered outrage and disgust at the eco snuff movie. Watts, who had this very early, immediately saw the problem with detonating moppets to save the planet.

Steve Goddard saw the video and likened it to Aztec sacrifices. Mother Nature Network was at first delighted by the video: I know MNN readers arent particularly violent or murderous people, but have you ever heard a fervent climate change denier share their non-scientifically-based opinions on TV (or worse, in real life) and thought, It would be so much easier to tackle global climate change if these naysayers were blown up like BPs oil well? Then Ive got a fourminute video you must watch. Called No Pressure, this short film celebrates everybody who is actively tackling climate change by blowing up those are arent. P Gosselin notes the timing, very close to the anniversary of the Climategate emails and wonders if Splattergate will have the same effect. My prediction, itll have more of an effect there is no opportunity for whitewashing panels to explain away the graphic unveiling of the murderous heart that beats inside the radical green movement. My own initial post on the 10:10 video features a catchy song you dont want to find yourself singing aloud at the water cooler.

The (non) Apology

The original apology has been replaced at the 10:10 site, but is pasted below in full. The reason it fanned the flames was because it made clear 10:10 interpreted the outrage only as stupid people not getting the joke: Today we put up a mini-movie about 10:10 and climate change called No Pressure. With climate change becoming increasingly threatening, and decreasingly talked about in the media, we wanted to find a way to bring this critical issue back into the headlines whilst making people laugh. We were therefore delighted when Britains leading comedy writer, Richard Curtis writer of Blackadder, Four Weddings, Notting Hill and many others agreed to write a short film for the 10:10 campaign. Many people found the resulting film extremely funny, but unfortunately some didnt and we sincerely apologise to anybody we have offended. As a result of these concerns weve taken it off our website. We wont be making any attempt to censor or remove other versions currently in circulation on the internet. Wed like to thank the 50+ film professionals and 40+ actors and extras and who gave their time and equipment to the film for free. We greatly value your contributions and the tremendous enthusiasm and professionalism you brought to the project. At 10:10 were all about trying new and creative ways of getting people to take action on climate change. Unfortunately in this instance we missed the mark. Oh well, we live and learn. Onwards and upwards, Franny, Lizzie, Eugenie and the whole 10:10 team Donna Laframboise has words about the non-apology apology that did nothing to quell the outrage and upset caused by the violent portrayal of detonating anyone who refuses to conform:

[the apology] sheds no light on how the dozens of people involved in its production could have believed the ads message was remotely appropriate. The apologys breezy conclusion: Oh well, we live and learn. Onwards and upwards suggests that the undersigned Franny, Lizzie, Eugenie and the whole 10:10 team still dont get it. Theyre clueless about how deeply offensive it is, in a free society, to suggest that people with alternative points-of-view deserve to be liquidated. If we are not free to disagree, we are not free. Period. Eventually, Eugenie Harvey of 10:10 released a proper apology, but by then it was far too late to stop the PR firestorm that threatens to make the radical green cause toxic to ordinary people.

Green on Green: The Angst, Anger and Aaaaaargh Moments

Bill McKibben, the founder of 350.org which is was closely allied to 10:10 stepped off a flight and into a facepalm: Id barely turned on my computer when that good feeling turned to a kind of quiet nausea. There were emails from people all saying the same thing: Have you seen this? This was a gross video making its way around Youtube, purporting to show people being blown up for not believing in climate change. Its been pulled from Youtube by its creators, the British climate group 10:10, but of course nothing is ever really pulled from Youtube. If you want to watch it bad enough, Im pretty sure you can find it. Or you can look at the stories by climate deniers assailing it as the latest example of eco-fascism. The climate skeptics can crow. Its the kind of stupidity that hurts our side, reinforcing in peoples minds a series of preconceived notions, not the least of which is that were out-of-control and out of touch not to mention off the wall, and also with completely misplaced sense of humor. Joe Romm expended a lot of spittle on the 10:10 video, but has since mysteriously self-censored himself. The page is blank, but the message still lays in the link address. Needless to say hes still mad at Morano. Jo Abbess went off on Franny Armstrong, before coming to her hippie senses and claiming her criticism was ironic. Give her credit for not self-censoring though. Greenpeace were asked for a reaction and decided that thousands of comments on news sites by outraged people was a ploy by those paid by Big Oil. No, really.

Skeptic Schadenfreude
Pajamas Media have their fun at the warmists expense: If someone set out to intentionally discredit the Global Warming movement, they couldnt have made a video more devastating than this one. Its as if the eco-fascists have an irrepressible urge to expose their unconscious fantasies to those whom they seek to dominate like a serial killer who sends taunting letters to the media. Marc Morano went on Fox News, but was left alone as not a single green would appear to speak for 1o:10s side, not even to apologize:

. . Piers Corbyn wonders why every politician hasnt denounced the video, probably not realizing that every politician dreams of having a little red button in his desk drawer. Fun with Josh:

The inevitable and likely short-lived Downfall snark (captions NSFW): . .

Corporates Scatter from the Splatter

Sony, Kyocera and O2 all sponsored 10:10, and soon regretted it. Sony and Kyocera quit as soon as the full awfulness of both the video and the reaction became apparent. Sony seemed to get it right away: Sony has supported the 10:10 climate change campaign because we share its objective to reduce carbon emissions. However, we strongly condemn the No Pressure video which was conceived, produced and released by 10:10 entirely without the knowledge or involvement of Sony. The company considers the video to be ill-conceived and in extremely bad taste. O2 on the other hand seems to relay corporate policy on what sponsored NGOs do via their call center in India. What does the 10:10 PR disaster mean for the future of that organization and even the willingness of business to involve itself with third-party activists in the future?

Media Mentions

James Delingpole called the 10:10 No Pressure effort a massive, epic fail. Its not like Dellers to understate things, perhaps he was under the weather. His Telegraph colleague, Anita Singh demonstrates why Showbusiness editors have no business writing about anything more complex than Survivor: Wherethehellarewe Withdrawing the film resulted in more internet coverage than the group could have wished for, harnessing the power of viral marketing and prompting curious viewers to head to the video-sharing website YouTube to see what the fuss was about. It led to suspicions that the entire set of events had been pre-planned, which the organisers denied. As an aside, after ten or so years without actually losing anyone to starvation, weather, shark attacks, or Lord of the Flies craziness, shouldnt that show be renamed by now? Even The Independent gets it: When you try to satirise the critics of your campaign, and it turns out that those very critics embrace your film as demonstrating exactly what they find unbearable about the climateobsessed eco-lobby, then you know that you have kicked the ball into your own net. Unfortunately, just as a star footballer who scores a spectacular own goal must now endure his foolishness being viewed endlessly on the internet, so Richard Curtis will have this hanging round his neck, like a stinking fish, for as long as he is successful enough to be worth mocking. The BBC mentioned No Pressure briefly and probably directed top journalists to figure out how the video is the fault of American neo-cons, or Israel, or preferably both. The NYT noted that the video was in bad taste and more likely to hurt the green movement than help it. Damian Thompson notes that bloodlust is often associated with those convinced that Armageddon is coming.

Splattergate Hottie
We wont waste the opportunity of a bonus round-up to feature a Hottie, and who better than someone who has starred in Dawn of the Dead. Skeptics, I give you Sarah Polley:

Thanks for reading, your regular Round-Up will be here tomorrow, as usual. By dailybayonet | October 6th, 2010

Why climate change deniers should be blown to bits

from The Reference Frame by Lubo Motl Sony, Kyocera, and others have terminated their relationships with the 10:10 campaign - and they may represent just the beginning of the recarbonization of the private sector and the return of sensible reasoning to the business world.

However, you may be sure that there still exist people on the fringes of the commercial sector who are faithful to the values of radical alarmism. You are welcome to open a website, Green Chip Stocks dot com, that writes about "a new way of life" and "a new generation of wealth". R.T. Jones has contributed an article called Why Climate Change Deniers Should Be Blown To Bits! He says that the "No Pressure" ad is kind of funny. And it is "bullshit" for someone to say that he is offended. As far as he can say, his opinions show that he has a sense of humor. Well, his text primarily proves that he respects no moral values.

According to Jones, what's really offensive is not that the folks were blown to pieces. What's offensive is that we still "entertain climate change deniers". In other words, the offensive fact (for Mr Jones) is that the movie has not yet been realized in the real world. Also, we're offered three images that are supposed to be more offensive than the detonation of the indifferent kids and adults:

Click images to zoom in. These are the three images that Mr Jones finds more offensive than this story:

Popout Wow. I have spent quite some time looking at the three "offensive" pictures but I still don't get it. What do I see? The first picture shows a modern city with skyscrapers. There are also some ships or bridges or oil tankers on the river or ocean or whatever it is. The only offensive thing I can see on the picture is the bad weather. Or is it smog? Be sure that ordinary clouds look just like this. Whatever it is, the colors don't look great. The second picture shows one dead fish near a pond, or whatever it is. The weather was arguably dry. While the demise of the fish may be sad, such a thing has occurred billions of times during the Earth's history so it can hardly be offensive to someone who has an idea about the life on Earth. The third picture shows a high density of cars on a huge superhighway. I don't even have a hypothesis what can possibly be offensive about this picture - except for the cloudy weather (or smog?). This is what the superhighway was built for. It's good to build highways because they allow cars to get from A to B in shorter time - and, by the way, eliminate pollution from most of the Earth's surface. This particular highway is clearly reaching its capacity which may be an argument to build more highways, rather than fewer highways. Have I missed something offensive about the pictures? I simply have no clue how someone could compare these totally innocent pictures to the detonation of kids and adults who were just indifferent to mad plans of others to regulate carbon all over the world. And if Mr Jones says that the three pictures are even more offensive than the sequence of ideologically motivated assassinations, I am simply left speechless.

Moreover, even if you happened to find some - or all - of these three pictures offensive, they have nothing to do with the debates about climate change or with carbon dioxide. People would (hopefully) build skyscrapers and ships even if they eliminated all fossil fuels from their lives. Also, droughts would sometimes kill some fish, just like they have been doing it for hundreds of millions of years. And lots of cars - possibly electric cars - would still be often clumped on the superhighways because superhighways with a large capacity and high density of cars are simply an efficient way to organize transportation (both from economic and even environmental viewpoint). So the opinions of Mr Jones just leave me puzzled. There is not a glimpse of an argument that I could recognize as a rational argument. And there is no glimpse of values and priorities that I could expect from someone who may deserve to be called an investor. Are the "new investors" supposed to be offended by every sign of the human economic activity? How is it supposed to work? For all practical purposes, Mr Jones belongs to a different species. Those organisms may resemble humans but they obviously can't be human in the conventional meaning of the word. They hate humans, their ordinary activities, and their achievements and they're amused by the murder of the humans. As far as I can say, Mr Jones is just a pollutant in the human society. While Mr Jones likes to obscure this fact, I love carbon dioxide but I dislike genuine pollutants. Sulfur dioxide and Mr Jones are just two examples. After the fall of communism, we managed to eliminate the former pollutant - almost all of it - from the Czech economy. The same thing holds for many other common pollutants. That doesn't mean that we have removed all things that annoy us or that threaten our health of the economy. Hat tip: Marc Morano

Hollywood: Stop Making Movies And Lower Your Carbon Footprint

from William M. Briggs by Briggs Just last week British movie director Richard Curtis thought it would be jolly to simulate the brutal killing of children who did not fret sufficiently over global warming. In his short film, when the teacher of a class found a kid who was not as panicked as she was, she would explode that kid in situ, the resulting debris spraying on the remainder of the class. Thatll teach em! Teach them what? Why, that the only reasonable response to global warming is complete, abject fear, coupled with a surrender of freedom to do whatever it is our bettorsCurtis classes himself onesay we should do. Death of a few is nothing to ensure that those graciously left alive think the proper thoughts. The road to Utopia must necessarily be paved with corpses. This mode of thought is, of course, that which guided the great socialist revolutions of the last century, where tens and tens and tens of millions of people were murdered unsympathetically in the name of the People. Thats the People, and not people. Ordinary people, being replaceable, may be slaughtered indiscriminately, but the People are sovereign. Evidently, the substance which makes up the People is not people.

The bloodlust that drives the far Left is ever present, as Curtiss creation proves. And as does this new ad (to the right), from a group which calls itself ACT responsible. As you will see, the hilarity of that name was surely unintentional. It shows a little girl in a blue dress, hands bound behind her, standing on an ice cube, which, being exposed to the air, is slowly melting as ice cubes are wont to do. Around the girls neck is a noose, which is already taut, because the girls icy perch is not sufficiently tall. What happens once the ice melts? Another stiff paving stone! At least this little girl will have died for the People. Of course, the ad is really asking, What could be done to save this poor little girl who we are willing to kill to prove our point? The answer is easy: if the girls life must be threatened, put the ice cube in a freezer where it belongs. A joke, yes; and not a good one. But I do have a non-facetious solution to offer Richard Curtis. If he is so keen to reduce his carbon footprint, he can stop making movies. Just think: his movies are awful (Love Actually, Four Weddings and a Funeral); they are not needed for survival; they are not sustainable; they cause actual harm. If all the actors and technicians who traipse about spewing CO2 in their efforts to make these superfluous movies would instead sit quietly in their homes, we would all be saved. I thus call on Hollywood, and the British equivalent, to cease producing new movies until this crisis passes. No caviling! This is for the People. Your sacrifices will be duly noted by future historians. And as long as were at it, another industry that could use a stand down is art. The hanging of the little girl was not the only artistic ad created to battle global warming. It was part of an exhibition. Art used to be that which is beautiful or truthful, and lasting. But that (coincidentally?) changed about a century ago, when art became that which is controversial. This came to mean, whatever will frighten or disgust your neighbors mother. Thus, art has been transformed into one long juvenile fart joke, with awards and grants given to the stupidest.

Dont agree? Then watch this ad, entitled Cow created for the group Live Earth. It features an extreme close up of a cows unclean backside, so close that we see the gas escaping from within. Not once, but many times. I admit that were I seventeen, I would think this hilarious. But after I became a man and put away childish things, I now find that the ad only serves to remind me that I am glad I was not overly influenced by James Heriots books to the extent of becoming a veterinarian. No idiocy is too extreme for todays artists (and movie directors). To rid ourselves of these blots of nature, we should not do as the Left would and begin lopping off heads. The solution is far easier: just ignore them. Do not pay for their movies, do not watch their shows. Turn off the television when their faces show. Do not buy the magazine where their images appear. Without incessant praise, the creatures will wither and die faster than the laughter of the audience watching one of Curtiss films.

10:10's 'No Pressure' exploding kids campaign: why it was such a success
By James Delingpole Politics Last updated: October 7th, 2010 10:10s Go green kids or well blow you into tiny pieces campaign has gone viral its video, as Richard North notes, having been viewed well over a million times on YouTube, as well as being celebrated in numerous parodies. As you can imagine, the question everyone is asking in Eco Medialand is: How do we replicate this marvellous success? How do we get everyone talking about us, in the way everyone is now talking about Franny and Eugenie and the gang? Well, Ive been looking at the 10:10 website H/T Barry Woods and the answer has been staring us in the face all along. Teamwork, thats what its down to. Teamwork, experience and a proven marketing track record. If you go here presuming they dont decide to shut the section down, like they did with the comments when they got too embarrassing you can read about all the special qualities the 10:10 gang are bringing to the party. Theres press intern Josefine Thieme, for example, whose job description includes Keeping a record of 10:10 press coverage. My, youll have been busy lately then, Josefine. Then theres Robin Houston, technical director, who admits to Laughing too loudly at inopportune moments. Robin, you must be in very heaven! But top man, surely is board member Chris Rose, director of Campaign Strategy Ltd. Presumably he must be the marketing mastermind behind this die kids, die! PR masterstroke. And at his website Campaign Strategy he offers top tips on how its done. His 12 Basic Guidelines include snappy sections with titles including Start where your audience is Campaign v. the unacceptable, Make real things happen and my favourite Say what you mean.

The simplest thing you can do to help your message is to be direct and straightforward. Forget being clever. When all else fails (as it probably will): say what you mean. (Try telling a relative when they get it, use their way of saying it). And they did forget being clever didnt they? They told us exactly like it is: we in the green movement passionately believe that the only language climate change deniers will ever understand is violent death administered at the touch of a button by nice, caring people like us. Couldnt be clearer. Before 10:10, the Eco Fascists had been hiding their light under a bushel. Now everyone knows what they really stand for. Well done Chris! Thank you Franny! Onwards and upwards, eh?

Oct. 7 2010 - 1:43 pm

Why Blowing Up Kids Seemed Like a Good Idea

By WARREN MEYER My guess is that most readers have seen the recent 10:10 climate video, in which government teachers and other global warming zealots push red buttons that explode school children and adults who dont toe the global warming line (if you missed the video, you can watch it here, though beware, there is a lot of, uh, gore.) Context is important. Had the video been part of a absurdist Monty Python sketch, I probably would have thought it funny. Had the video been produced by skeptics to mock the stridency of the

global warming community, it would have been thought to be over-the-top. But this was a video funded by establishment groups, showing those who opposed them being killed in a horrible manner. After an initial non-apology that basically read, were sorry you have no sense of humor, folks who are alarmed about global warming have been spinning the video as a fleeting and isolated error in judgment roughly equivalent to a politicians misstatement in a debate. This doesnt entirely wash, however hundreds of people had to be involved in the making of the video over a period of months, from original concept design through post-production. The group involved well-known directors and actors and prominent activists in the 10:10 organization and its partners. The whole effort was underwritten by a number of major corporations as well as the UK government. I have been a part of the public climate debate for several years, and unlike those helping to spin this video as a regrettable aberration, in many ways I think such a production was almost inevitable. In particular, alarmists have worked hard to portray climate skeptics not as reasonable people who disagree with them, but as evil, bad-intentioned monsters out to destroy the Earth for their own narrow personal gain. We can see this ad hominem approach in the comments by Joe Romm in response to the 10:10 video. Romm is prominent global warming alarmist and proprietor of the web site Climate Progress, the climate site launched by the Center for American Progress where he is a fellow. Romm quickly distanced himself from the 10:10 video, calling it beyond tasteless, but went on to make the tu quoque argument that individual anti-science, pro-pollution disinformers, of course, routinely promote hate speech. What was telling in Romms comments was this: but those trying to destroy a livable climate, well, for them lies and hate speech are the modus operandi. It is practically an article of faith among climate alarmists in their echo chamber that skeptics are trying to destroy a livable climate. This is absurd. While one could probably find someone on Earth who holds just about any wacky opinion that can be imagined, I know many of the prominent skeptics world-wide and I am confident none of them are motivated by a desire to destroy the Earth. Space is too short here to run through the breadth and depth of issues skeptics have with the hypothesis of catastrophic man-made global warming. In short, though, most skeptics do not deny that CO2 acts as a greenhouse gas to warm the Earth, or that man is contributing incrementally to CO2 levels. Skeptics, however, tend to deny the catastrophe in other words, we argue that many climate forecasts are grossly exaggerating future man-made warming and greatly overstating the effects of small amounts of warming in creating adverse weather conditions (for those interested, the science of the skeptics position is in part outlined here). Suffice it to say that there are reasoned differences that well-intentioned people can have with the catastrophic climate change hypothesis. Certainly it is fair for folks like Joe Romm to argue that the end result of what skeptics advocate is an unlivable climate, but it is grossly unfair to argue that skeptics are motivated by destroying the climate. I could as easily argue that Romm is motivated by keeping billions of residents of developing nations in poverty, because I think that will be the outcome of what he advocates, but this would be an equally unfair attack on his motivations. Romms comments really highlight one of the most abused terms in modern discourse: hate speech. Romm seems to accept what has become the defacto definition of hate speech, which is since I am motivated by saving society / humanity / the planet, then anybody who disagrees with

me must be engaging in hate speech, because by disagreeing with me he or she must therefore hate society / humanity / the planet. By hammering for years on the motivations, rather than the science, of skeptics, environmental leaders have built a community of supporters who believe to their core that skeptics are actively plotting to destroy the Earth. While no one would consider violence or government action against those who are arguing questions of science in a fact-based manner, it is not a very long step to advocating such extreme consequences for people one thinks are hatching a Dr. Evil-like plot to destroy the Earth. In fact, it has not been unusual for prominent activists to publicly call for dire punishments of skeptics. In 2008, NASAs James Hansen, a leading global warming alarmist, used a speech before Congress to argue that oil company executives should be put on trial for high crimes against humanity and nature for fostering doubt about global warming. Robert Kennedy, Jr. called coal companies criminal enterprises and said that one coal CEO should be in jail for all eternity both for selling a high-carbon product and being publicly skeptical of global warming. Anonymous web posts calling for death to climate skeptics are practically routine, with one blog post (later deleted) at leftish Talking Points Memo asking at what point do we jail or execute global warming deniers? And thus I think we can better understand how a group of probably well-meaning activists and filmmakers could create such crazy, totalitarian vision. In many ways, the film reminds me of Quentin Tarantinos Inglorious Basterds, which is a fantasy film about a group of jewish soldiers killing Hitler and his high command. Viewers are not offended by the bloodshed and brutality, because the fantasy is so delicious. The same must have been true for those who created and screened the 10:10 video prior to its release. Rather than an isolated aberration, then, the 10:10 video can be seen as the end result of years of ad hominem attacks meant to marginalize skeptics and make it unnecessary to actually address their concerns about the science. Perhaps this video will mark a turning point where we can finally start talking about the science rather than attacking motivations.

Friday, 8 October 2010

Say No To 02

courtesy of Gotty

O2 are the only main sponsors still supporting the 10:10 campaign. Sony and many others have bowed out since the making of 'No Pressure'. Yesterday I spent the afternoon with a friend who is a retired teacher. She was a 'traditional' teacher. The type who was respected for her firm parameters and discipline. The subject of the No Pressure video came into our conversation and she voiced her concern about the children involved in the making of the film. "Nobody seems to have understood the impact being in such a film could have on a child," she said. She continued by explaining the excitement the film makers would have created for the children, (as seen in the trailer), but she was most adamant that the 'high' wouldn't last long and some children could feel very guilty at being part of a group who approved of blowing up their peers. She certainly has a point. Another point was the seeming lack of parental protest at the finished product. There's nothing she could find online from any parent whose child took part in this production, yet she's sure that many must feel the same guilt as some children. Her final comment was that the head of the school, which was used by the film makers, must take a considerable amount of responsibility for exposing his charges to these climate change fanatics and their ideas. We really should be told what the arrangement was between the school and the film makers. Did money change hands or was it all done gratis? Were parents asked to sign a consent form? Did the form explain the class scene in detail? Were the children professionally debriefed? So many questions which must be answered. Posted by subrosa at 20:57

Peter P. said
October 11, 2010 at 12:53 am

Hi Folks! HAPPY CLIMATE FOOLS DAY! To commemorate the 10:10 eco-snuff movie, I would like to suggest that October 10 henceforth be celebrated worldwide as Climate Fools Day. Let this day forever be a reminder of how the eco-fascists blew themselves up with their own hateful propaganda, marking the beginning of the end of the global warming scam. Can our internet-savvy friends please help create a websitesomething along the lines of climatefools.orgwith links to the 10:10 eco-snuff movie. The objective is to shame these green bullies and remind them that civilized people wont tolerate their unacceptable fascist behavior. e.g. text on website page: -Ticking countdown- LEFT TO CLIMATE FOOLS DAY! CLIMATE FOOLS DAY is a day of peace and sanity where the free peoples of the world celebrate: - The end of eco-fascism - Electricity and all its life-enriching benefits - Oil and coal and all their life-enriching benefits - Cows and all their tasty benefits - All the good things about protecting and caring for our environment, minus the fraud that is carbon taxation, emissions trading, biofuels and other unproven renewable energy technologies But No Pressure! LESS WE FORGET - 10:10 eco-snuff video - Franny Armstrongs Half-assed Hahaha Apology - 10:10s follow-up whiny I just got a baby apology - Sony statement - Kyocera statement - Mind-boggling hypocritical statement by 350.orgs Bill McKibben, condemning the 10:10 movie while calling those who question the science of global warming deniers

Peter P. said
October 11, 2010 at 4:45 am

CLIMATE FOOLS DAY FACEBOOK PAGE: http://www.facebook.com/people/Climate-Fools-Day/100001675988958 Friend me nowNo Pressure!

10:10:10 Day! Kill All Humans To Save The Planet!

by Daedalus X Parrot on October 11, 2010

Well arent we all excited and happy! Today is 10:10:10 day, yippee! Yes, those thoughtful fans of child executions at 10:10 (who created that thoughtful Warmist propaganda snuff movie), have deemed that today is the day that we must save the planet by exploding children or some such activity. You too can join these lovely, fluffy, tree-hugging do-gooders by signing up here: Sign Up to 10:10 The poor dears are really quite shy and have not worded their Sign Up page in the robust way that Warming Alarmists should do. So as part of my bit to save the planet, here is my translation of their Sign Up web page in the language that they should have used:

It doesnt end there! Those 10:10 folks have als o, very kindly, provided a clever web page that allows you to design your own poster, here: Make Your Own 10:10 Poster. (Hat tip to grumpyoldtwat) Again, these lovely, fluffy hippies are just too modest to really express their true feelings, so I have made a couple of my own posters for them, above and here:

10:10: who are YOU going to kill to help save the planet?
By James Delingpole Politics Last updated: October 10th, 2010

Hey kids, the big days here. Its 10/10/10 and that if youve been following the campaign of Franny Armstrong, Richard Curtis, Eugenie and all their other nicely-spoken, privately-educated, Daddy-funded, Guardian-reading trustafarian chums at 10:10, youll know that means just one thing: Climate Action. So what are you going to do today? Here are a few suggestions, inspired Richard Curtiss campaign video which has proved so successful that at least 20,000 10:10 signatories were inspired to resign. Well done Richard!

1. Encourage Daddy to convert his Aston-Martin or Kenneth-Noye style Range Rover to biofuels, like the Prince of Wales has. Biofuels are great for the environment because they lead to higher food prices and starvation in the Third World. And the more people who starve to death in the Third World the better it is for nature. Because remember, overpopulation is the real problem. 2. Kill a climate denier, any denier theyre all the same and their Exxon-funded attempts to deny the overwhelming scientific consensus on global warming makes them fit only for one thing. Death. Just like Richard Curtis showed us on his video. And he should know: he wrote Love, Actually. 3. Build a wind turbine in your garden. Never mind the neighbours. Dont worry about planning permission Uncle Chris Huhne will make sure any local objections are brutally overridden. Its a win win situation. Not only do you get to show how serious you are about your environmentalism never mind the birds you kill or the views you spoil: the Environment is abut much more than wildlife or aesthetics but you get paid for by the taxpayer for all the pretend comedy electricity you generate. 4. Write an inarticulate comment below a blog like this one. Perhaps you can refer readers to the experts at Realclimate the unbiased information website run by friends of the distinguished, world-renowned inventor of the marvellous Hockey Stick, Michael Mann. Perhaps you could do you bit for the climate wars by reporting every remark that you disagree with to the moderators. Remember, this battle isnt about facts. Its about making sure everyone knows how evil and wrong climate change deniers are. Worthy of death in fact. 5. Hug a polar bear. Go to the arctic circle right now, creep up to the nearest polar bear and hug one. Try it. Theyre not at all violent. The best ones to go for are the babies, when their mother is nearby. You can tell by how white and innocent and fluffy they look. Happy 10/10/10 everybody!

Franny's Friend Emily is Making a Film

Emily James: Lights, camera, activists - Features, Films - The Independent

Emily James, who was an executive producer on 2009's climate change wake-up film Age of Stupid, has now committed herself to a project which her former commissioning editors won't touch with a bargepole. Her film Just Do It Get off your arse and change the world! follows the frequently criminal exploits of people taking direct action on climate change, shadowing three organisations Climate Rush, Climate Camp and Plane Stupid as they strive to bring attention to their causes. Due for release early next year, it promises to be an unashamedly sympathetic portrait of the activist community by someone who has been given unprecedented levels of access.

"We are often portrayed as just crusty hippies, posh kids with trust funds, hopeless dreamers or domestic extremists," ...

Malthus rides again! (Courtesy of SciAm)

from Counting Cats in Zanzibar by NickM An additional 150 people join the ranks of humanity every minute, a pace that could lead our numbers to reach 9 billion by 2050. Changing that peak population number alone could save at least 1.4 billion metric tons of carbon from entering the atmosphere each year by 2050, according to a new analysisthe equivalent of cutting more than 10 percent of fossil fuel burning per year. Demography will matter to greenhouse gas emissions over the next 40 years, said earth systems scientist Brian ONeill of the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research, lead author of the analysis, in a statement. If global population growth slows down, it is not going to solve the climate problem, but it can make a contribution. Earth systems sounds a lot like engineering to me. Not science. The scientist seeks truth the engineer seeks what is good. Think about that in the context. ONeill and his colleagues paired data from national household surveys in 34 countries with a new economic modelthe Population Environment and Technology (PET) modelto estimate the impact of various population growth scenarios on greenhouse gas emissions. The model also took into account changes in the makeup of that overall population, based on United Nations data, such as the aging population of Europe as well as the rapidly urbanizing one of India. That urban growthroughly half of humanity already lives in cities for the first time in recorded historymay lead to a big increase in greenhouse gas emissions. As urban residents enter the middle class, particularly in China and India, they increase their consumption of energy and transportation. Urban living can be more energy efficient, the authors write in the analysis published online in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on October 11, but increased income results in increased emissions. Lordy! SciAm seems to be following the path of that veritable Lion of Science Prince Chuckles. At the same time, the mellowing that comes with age in industrialized countries could cut emissions from countries such as those in the E.U. by as much as 20 percent. At least thats true if present retirement ages and the like remain the same; if retirement is postponed, the scientists note, the emissions-reducing effect of aging that we find here will be lessened. Lets have more pensioners freezing to death, for the polar bears you understand. Their sacrifice will not go unrewarded by Gaia! People probably will retire later because not only are people living longer but are remaining healthy longer and if we can crack some of the maladies of age such as Alzheimers disease then great! To me this is a good thing. Curling up and dying because its better for the environment is getting into Logans Run territory. Overall, curbing population growth could reduce greenhouse gas emissions; reducing peak population to roughly 8 billion, for example, could save 29 percent of expected greenhouse gas emissions. Economic growth seems like one way to accomplish that, considering that rising wealth has historically slowed birth rates. But ONeill and his colleagues warn that, if fewer but richer people consume moreas current consumption patterns in places like the U.S. suggestthose greenhouse gas savings become increased emissions.

I love the curbing there. The reprehensible Indira Gandhi of course only forceably sterilized the poor. Thankfully her tyranny was brought to an end by assassination by her own bodyguard which must be truly the the mark of someone with the profound evils. It would appear we should not repeat this mistake. The meek (Gaia bless them!) arent the problem now. Oh noes! Its the Indian with an iPhone and holiday plans for Thailand we ought to be on the look out for. She may even have a car! Oh the calamity! Spay her like a bitch before she breeds! Ultimately, family planning alonesuch as the use of condoms and other reproductive health servicesin parts of the world with growing populations, including the U.S., could restrain population growth significantly, this analysis finds [Well, if it didn't work I can imagine the class-action to end them all!]. It would appear that were trying, thanks primarily to ongoing efforts to enable women to take control of their own lives through education and other methods. Already, birth rates the world over have halved from an average of five children per women to just 2.6 todaya baby bust replacing the baby boom. Education and other methods Well leave the other methods to the shade of Mrs Gandhi but education is an interesting one. What precisely does that mean? If it means sex-ed then yadda, yadda etc. If it means education in general then that genuinely does reduce birth-rates. Nobody thinks, Now I got my degree in Mech Eng (which is evil of course because those mechanical contrivances positively bowk carbon like a Geordie does a Technicolor yodel on the Quayside at 2:30am, Saturday) Im gonna spend the next 15-20 years as a baby-momma. Is it just me or is the entire Green movement utterly disconnected from reality? I have heard the term reproductive justice and it means the opposite to what I have always intuitively sensed. It goes like this, Ms Potless in Uganda ought to be able to have more kids than Ms Moneybags in England because they will result in less CO2. Seriously (get the subtext - poor is Righteous). And you (and I) thought, in our naiviety, that having kids ought to be at least partially based upon the number you can support with a decent standard of living. You fools must make em grovel or Oxfam execs are out of a job! I have heard figures like 40x less for the relative carbon emissions of a third world newborn versus one born into a western family. All of this is predicated upon the Ugandan kid growing up to live a life of subsistence agriculture and not doing horrible things like I dunno getting a scholarship to Harvard or setting up a trucking business or this that or the other but essentially developing his or her countrys economy. No! They shouldnt do anything like that because they are The Righteous and it is good they die of infant diarrhoea. They are The Righteous because they will never use a phone or fly in a plane or play computer games or have a fridge. They are The Righteous so we dont have to be and we can thus genuflect by sorting and washing trash just so the council can pretend it isnt eventually all going to be land-filled anyway. They are the ones who shall die for our sins whilst we erect pointless windmills and use bags for life from TESCO. They are The Righteous that make organic Fairtrade granola bars that we can absorb to absolve all our sins. They are The Righteous that Bono suffers to come unto Him. They are The Righteous who are not allowed aspiration. They are the Righteous who need a middle-class gap-year student to dig a well for them and be jolly grateful for it too because even desiring a fitted kitchen and a waste disposal unit would make them un-Righteous. They are righteous because they dont have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of and we are crucified on material plenty and must suffer in minor ways. They are The Righteous because we dont allow them to even dream the most mundane dreams. Things like having a tap in the house or a TV or a 300 quid Dell laptop. They are The Righteous so we can eviscerate ourselves eternally over their plight and for that they must have a plight because it makes us feel good washing the trash and sorting the future landfill

debris of our Fairtrade lifestyles for that is good because it makes us feel good and therefore it must be good. How can it not be? Well, because it isnt but that is mere reality and reality can be invented cant it? Green is profound decadence because Well, look at the language. We are in the developed world which implies that thats your lot. No. It. Isnt. I want a jetpack and a holiday home on Titan (Ill buy yall an umbrella drinks by the methane seas one day). The whole idea of the developed world strongly implies that that is the end-game. Developing world is a euphemism but not quite in the sense it is routinely deployed. It is the idea that we have too much and they too little. Of course they have too little but not only is wealth transfer not the solution for so many reasons but the even more corrosive idea that we should be more like them being trumpeted from the highest sustainable rampart is a way to piss on, from a great (though ecological) height, every aspiration they have. It is stupendously racist. It is about happy natives dancing around a well dug by someone on a gap-year who will go back to reading Mummy and Daddys Guardian and feeling good about themselves in a four bedroom, two reception room and two bathroom house in Islington or Jeswick. It is obscene. Make no mistake here. Green wants most of my species to live in abject poverty and indeed revels in that idea. It wants Africa and Asia to remain authentic so the Greens can feel bad about even the Prius parked outside. Green wants to condemn maybe a quarter of the global population to being reasonably comfortable and feeling bad about it (and feeling good by feeling bad) and the rest to a short and miserable life that I cant even imagine but I do not for one New York second think is worthier than mine. Cats recently posted on the premire of Franny Armstrongs Age of Stupid and the rank hypocrisy of the stars who turned up by plane for a movie that calls air travel the greatest sin contra Gaia. Almost 107 years ago a couple of bicycle engineers thought flight might be a good idea. It is. Orville and Wilbur were right (and Wright - bad joke, sorry) but they were. I have on occasions been round much of Europe by surface but Ive also been to the USA several times and Im not such a great swimmer if you catch my drift. For me the Twentieth Century produced two epic innovations. One Im using right now and the other has wings. So my Greenie chums suck on the bitter popsicle of truth. You will not keep me Earthbound and more to the point there are about two and a half billion Indians and Chinese who might quite fancy a bit of a trip as well. How terribly inauthentic of them! They are supposed to be natives aint they? Natives with space programs. Let me put this bluntly. The Greens see village life (or slum life) in these countries as something to aspire towards whereas the actual people who live there see my life (or yours) as what they want. Imagine a World where India, Africa and China had an overall European standard of living. It could happen and it could happen organically, naturally, and surprisingly quickly just as long as we dont fall into the Green trap and its fundamental, epic, lack of imagination. And that is what it is. A lack of imagination. If, Dear Reader, you ever visit me where I grew-up we could go for a short walk and I could show you the cottage where a Mr George Stephenson lived. Our future (all of us) ought to be interesting and spectacular. Where it goes I know not and that is the beauty of it but it has to go. The alternative, the Green alternative is so grimnacious as to be past my comprehension. We are the double-knowing ape. Since Newton, Darwin, Stephenson, Tesla, Turing we have no limits So Lets go! And fuck the Monbiots. Because we are better than their dismal take on reality.

Per Ardua Ad Astra! PS I meant it about umbrella drinks on Titan. I guess it might cost me a few bob but the caresses of the triple breasted (and green skinned) bar-keep might just make the night worthwhile PPS SciAm is now shite. I used to read it as a kid and I taught myself complex arithmetic from it in order to program my Amiga to draw fractals. JuliaM says: October 14, 2010 at 12:09 am As their ecoscam unravels faster and faster, they get more and more desperate. Seen the letter from the eminent scientists in CiF today? They think the MoD R&D budget should be defunded and spent on them instead, to ensure world peace, global justice and a more equal society. Them being (mostly) scientists connected to the green industry

Will the Church of Gaia EVER close?

from Churchmouse Campanologist by churchmouse 13 October 2010

The Church of Gaia just ramped up tenfold with the controversial 10:10 campaign. I had intended on ignoring the whole doggone thing until I read The True Colors of Fascism by the Lutheran pastor, Father Hollywood (LCMS). (He explains the origin of his moniker on the blog, by the way.) Reluctantly, I watched the video. Now Im glad I did. Hes right its not for children or those of a sensitive disposition. Contrary to what Richard (Love, Actually) Curtis says, there is nothing remotely funny about it. I hadnt realised that the whole production was British. It does put us in a very poor light. Please dont think that all British people are this way. Its just the Fabian intelligentsia at work. And, yes, there is a vogue for schoolboys here to tie their ties very short. They think it makes them look cool. In reality, they only look like dorks. However, first back to Father Hollywood, who correctly and succinctly points out (emphases mine throughout): And when youve had enough of this godless fascism, a manifestation of what St. Augustine called the lust for domination, you might want to consider Christianity and its corollary philosophy that human beings are made in Gods image and are endowed by their Creator with freedom. Sadly, not even our own governments understand the master-servant relationship. Fascism is alive and well. Is this how you want to live your life?

In the comments, he reflected further: They obviously cant compel people and blow them up even if they wish they could. But the state can. And thats where life imitates art. There is also an underlying message of conformity. Get on board because everyone else is whether the premise is true or false, whether you agree or disagree, none of that matters. No pressure really means peer pressure. And the state has the power to enforce ideologies such as this. It has the means to confiscate and redistribute, to tax and destroy, to imprison and even to splatter the blood of nonconformists and make examples of those who disagree. If the 20th century has taught us anything, it has confirmed George Washingtons dictum: Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. What he wrote reminded me of President Obamas new assassination programme. Never would I have imagined such a thing taking place in the United States of America. Salons Glenn Greenwald had the best summary and analysis. If you are unfamiliar with the story and its implications in line with Father Hollywoods observations please take the time to read it in full. Here are a few excerpts: At this point, I didnt believe it was possible, but the Obama administration has just reached an allnew low in its abysmal civil liberties record. In response to the lawsuit filed by Anwar Awlakis father asking a court to enjoin the President from assassinating his son, a U.S. citizen, without any due process, the administration late last night, according to The Washington Post, filed a brief asking the court to dismiss the lawsuit without hearing the merits of the claims The same Post article quotes a DOJ spokesman as saying that Awlaki should surrender to American authorities and return to the United States, where he will be held accountable for his actions. But hes not been charged with any crimes, let alone indicted for any. The President has been trying to kill him for the entire year without any of that due process. And now the President refuses even to account to an American court for those efforts to kill this American citizen on the ground that the Presidents unilateral imposition of the death penalty is a state secret. UPDATE: As a reminder: Obama supporters who are dutifully insisting that the President not only has the right to order American citizens killed without due process, but to do so in total secrecy, on the ground that Awlaki is a Terrorist and Traitor, are embracing those accusations without having the slightest idea whether theyre actually true. All they know is that Obama has issued these accusations, which is good enough for them. Thats the authoritarian mind, by definition: if the Leader accuses a fellow citizen of something, then its true no trial or any due process at all is needed and there is no need even for judicial review before the decreed sentence is meted out, even when the sentence is death. For those reciting the Awlaki-is-a-traitor mantra, theres also the apparently irrelevant matter that Article III, Section 3 of the Constitution (the document which these same Obama supporters pretended to care about during the Bush years) provides that No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.

As Americans say, I have no dog in this hunt. Its the principle of the thing. Meanwhile, the UK, in line with most EU countries, has transformed itself from the land of the village eccentric into one of conformists. People do watch each others behaviour. Admittedly, not everyone, but you do have to fall in line much more: dress relatively normally, look industrious at the weekend (very American) and adopt the socio-political outlook of your manager at work or local cleric. One must fit and fit well. Anyone who has gone for a job interview has to be adjudged to fit before being hired. This is called cultural cloning. Samir Shah, chairman of the Runnymede Trust, wrote about the phenomenon for The Spectator in 2009: The real problem is what I call cultural cloning the human tendency to recruit in ones own image. Recruitment, instead of being about picking the best people, becomes a process of finding people like the ones already there. The overwhelming need for a kind of cultural comfort blanket takes precedence over every other consideration and rules out those whose backgrounds dont quite fit. This is what a 21st-century Equalities Commission should have in its sights. Cultural cloning is, in my opinion, the main source of discrimination in Britain today. Style, background, accent, dress sense and cultural (as opposed to ethnic) background and most of all your manner count just as much as your ethnicity in trying to land that job. This, of course, brings a whole set of problems that we need to overcome Were not talking about an old boys-club, either. It is a postmodern, post-Second World War social phenomenon. The people in the 10:10 film teacher, manager and sound technician exemplify it perfectly. Awfully nice people on the surface: no pressure, unless you dont conform. This is why many classically British individuals look askance at David Camerons Big Society. Will there be a gauleiter in every street? Who knows? I remember a few years ago that the police service in one county in England announced that residents notifying them of suspected crime would receive a sum of money if the person was convicted. I mentioned it in passing at work. To my astonishment, one of the guys piped up, I wish theyd do that in my county. The money I could make! I asked if he didnt see a moral issue with it. What moral issue? Who cares about morals? I need the money. And that sums up a sadly-increasing number of my fellow Britons today. And should heaven forbid a majority of people ever assume an attitude of conformity, are short of cash and become card-carrying members of the Church of Gaia, we have had it as a society. Youll find out more tomorrow. Then again, something similar could happen anywhere. Have a look at the second video in Father Hollywoods post: the State of Pennsylvanias 30-second advert to catch tax cheats. Think it couldnt happen? Think again.

The British reaction to the Church of Gaia and Harold Lewis

from Churchmouse Campanologist by churchmouse October 14, 2010

James Delingpole, Telegraph blogger and Spectator columnist, is keen on debunking the Church of Gaia. So, it was no surprise that he latched on to Harold Lewiss resignation letter from the American Physical Society, whose position on climate change can be found here. The position statement is the one to which Professor Lewis refers to below. (Thanks to Dick Puddlecote for featuring the Delingpole column.) Since then, it appears that Professor Lewis will be joining The Global Warming Policy Foundation. Here are excerpts from Professor Lewiss letter (emphases mine throughout): When I first joined the American Physical Society sixty-seven years ago it was much smaller, much gentler, and as yet uncorrupted by the money flood Indeed, the choice of physics as a profession was then a guarantor of a life of poverty and abstinenceit was World War II that changed all that As recently as thirty-five years ago, when I chaired the first APS study of a contentious social/scientific issue, The Reactor Safety Study, though there were zealots aplenty on the outside there was no hint of inordinate pressure on us as physicists. We were therefore able to produce an honest appraisal of the situation at that time How different it is now. The money flood has become the raison dtre of much physics research, the vital sustenance of much more, and it provides the support for untold numbers of professional jobs. It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist . Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montfords book organizes the facts very well.) I dont believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist. So what has the APS, as an organization, done in the face of this challenge? It has accepted the corruption as the norm, and gone along with it. For example: 1/ In its better days, APS used to encourage discussion of important issues, and indeed the Constitution cites that as its principal purpose. No more. Everything that has been done in the last year has been designed to silence debate. 2/ The appallingly tendentious APS statement on Climate Change was apparently written in a hurry and is certainly not representative of the talents of APS members as I have long known them. So a few of us petitioned the Council to reconsider it In response APS appointed a secret committee that never met, never troubled to speak to any skeptics, yet endorsed the Statement in its entirety The original Statement, which still stands as the APS position, also

contains what I consider pompous and asinine advice to all world governments, as if the APS were master of the universe. 3/ In the interim the ClimateGate scandal broke into the news, and the machinations of the principal alarmists were revealed to the world. It was a fraud on a scale I have never seen, and I lack the words to describe its enormity. Effect on the APS position: none. None at all. This is not science; other forces are at work. 4/ So a few of us tried to bring science into the act (that is, after all, the alleged and historic purpose of APS), and collected the necessary 200+ signatures to bring to the Council a proposal for a Topical Group on Climate Science I might note that it was not easy you denied us the use of the APS membership list. We conformed in every way with the requirements of the APS Constitution, and described in great detail what we had in mindsimply to bring the subject into the open. 5/ To our amazement, Constitution be damned, you declined to accept our petition, but instead used your own control of the mailing list to run a poll on the members interest in a TG on Climate and the Environment. You did ask the members if they would sign a petition to form a TG on your yet-to-be-defined subject, but provided no petition, and got lots of affirmative responses The entire purpose of this exercise was to avoid your constitutional responsibility to take our petition to the Council. 6/ As of now you have formed still another secret and stacked committee to organize your own TG, simply ignoring our lawful petition. APS management has gamed the problem from the beginning, to suppress serious conversation about the merits of the climate change claims. Do you wonder that I have lost confidence in the organization? I do feel the need to add one note, and this is conjecture, since it is always risky to discuss other peoples motives. This scheming at APS HQ is so bizarre that there cannot be a simple explanation for it I think it is the money to say nothing of the fame and glory (and frequent trips to exotic islands) that go with being a member of the club. Your own Physics Department would lose millions a year if the global warming bubble burst. And so would Tobacco Control, another leviathan spanning the world. But well look at the spurious science behind that in another post. Its all money and job-generating stuff. And, as my readers have seen, its also all about Church unity. No dissension, no discussion, only agreement. After all, when funding and your job are at stake, whats to discuss? About this, Dick Puddlecote writes: I have looked at tobacco control science. Just about all of it. And everything described by Lewis is not only replicated therein, but is more duplicitous, more resistant to debate, more mendacious, more money-oriented, and more corrupt, than anything Lewis will have witnessed. Based on this experience, I can also offer a prediction. Lewis will be ostracised, his name blackened, his previous work dismissed as eccentricity, his future work dismissed as funded

by oil companies. He will be expunged from the scientific community and threats of similar treatment will be issued to all who dare to commission him. Or maybe, as one of Dicks readers noted, theyll just say he was gaga or an embittered old man. I hope not, but this is how these guys work. And theyre always in it for the long Gramscian game. Delingpoles blog post generated nearly 1,800 comments when I read it. It may have more now. A reader, Henrybrubaker, cited in the blog Banned, had this to say (brief excerpt below): Eco-fascists are extreme and they are willing to go to any lengths to protect their criminal schemes. If they are not confronted, discredited and defeated could the future bring us an ecogenocide? There are those on the side of gaia who think that is exactly what should happen . The greenies will scream at me How dare you compare us to the Nazis, we are not the same, we dont want to build the death camps etc. Perhaps not, perhaps the majoity dont want to kill us all. However, these people are the tools, the useful idiots, of the extremist eco-fascists. They do the ground work for people with views like Pentti Linkola, the Finnish eco-fascist who wants to destroy the majority of humanity and essentially enslave the rest Mr Brubakers comment received 54 recommendations from his fellow readers. Stewart Cowan of Realstreet does an outstanding job of dissecting ethical issues. In Is Prince Charles a eugenicist? Are you without realising? he explores why the heir to the throne thinks the way he does: Prince Philip wrote in the foreword to If I Were an Animal (1986), In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, in order to contribute something to solve overpopulation. He notes that the Prince of Wales wishes to be known as Defender of Nature when he becomes king: Defender of Nature? The worry is: how much do his beliefs match his dads? Cowan believes that the Church of Gaia is part of eugenics: This is how the worlds elites view humanity as a virus; a cancer spreading across the planet and killing it. I believe the main purpose of the environment movement is to sear images like these into peoples minds so that they will either willingly accept, or more likely, be forced to go along with a managed reduction in population: eugenics. On the 10:10 campaign, he writes: They really seemed to believe as Prince Philip does and also appeared to revel in the bloody murder of those who wont go along with them. It seems that the only difference between the Nazis and the Ecofascists is the targets to be eliminated.

The mysterious Georgia Guidestones suggest the worlds population should be limited to half a billion people. These elite atheist globalist Ten Commandments are as follows. (Some of these should already be familiar as the groundwork was begun a long time ago) 1. Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature. 2. Guide reproduction wisely improving fitness and diversity. 3. Unite humanity with a living new language. 4. Rule passion faith tradition and all things with tempered reason. 5. Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts. 6. Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court. 7. Avoid petty laws and useless officials. 8. Balance personal rights with social duties. 9. Prize truth beauty love seeking harmony with the infinite. 10. Be not a cancer on the earth Leave room for nature Leave room for nature. Whoever was responsible for these words clearly thought that at least nine out of ten people must be eliminated. Notice how much prominence that second commandment has in western society today: Guide reproduction wisely. The only guidestone that makes any sense is Number 7, however, I suspect that would be used against us instead of for us. He notes that family planning has been around for many decades now: It has been made to appear totally acceptable, even wholesome. As I have written about before, Marie Stopes, pioneer of Britains abortion clinics, used to send her poetry to Adolf Hitler in adoration, while calling for the compulsory sterilisation of the diseased, drunkards, or simply those of bad character. While that hasnt quite happened yet, family planning is considered normal and many people believe that killing unborn humans is acceptable, even a womans right. This particular cull deprives many millions a year of their part in history. I didnt know that about Marie Stopes, did you? Whats next? What about: a euthanasia industry to match the effectiveness of the abortion factories? This should easily be achieved in this age of family breakdowns and the seemingly increasing disrespect for the elderly. Old folk will be told it is their right to be terminated in cases of illness, even a spot of depression or a harelip. They will be encouraged to feel they are a burden to the rest of society and the environment and eventually theyll be volunteering to jump off cliffs (or ride their wheelchairs over). There will be posters in doctors surgeries alongside the family planning ones. Who knows? Euthanasia may even be incorporated into family planning. For example, if you want four children, you should plan to have all the grandparents killed off by the time the fourth child arrives. It could be promoted as a double celebration: a new life comes into the world and

an old timer gives his life for the planet so as to maintain humanity in perpetual balance with nature. Cowans conclusion is chilling: You could live with that, couldnt you? Ask yourself how many of their lies you have bought up until now. I can think of a group with whom they might start. Can you? Hint: its the only minority group worldwide that has no legal or state protection anywhere, increasingly deprived of housing, recreation and employment. If you think you know who it is, do leave a comment.

Im sure Richard Curtis doesnt really want to kill my children. Well, I say that
James Delingpole 16 October 2010

For some time now Ive had this idea for a running gag in a comedy sketch series. For some time now Ive had this idea for a running gag in a comedy sketch series. It would star a character called Unfunny Observational Comic. Each week wed see him dying a death with his Have you ever noticed...? comedy of recognition before an appalled audience. Hed say things like: You know how it is, when youve broken into your neighbours house to rummage through her knicker drawer...? and Gerbils. Just what is it about gerbils that makes us all want to shag em? The humour would lie, of course, in the Observational Comics tragic inability to apprehend the gulf between what he thinks is normal and what everybody else does. Unfortunately, its not going to work any more, a) because Ive explained the joke, and b) because Richard Curtis has beaten me to it with an accidentally unfunny sketch so awful that even if Little Nell were to toss all her kittens into the yawning mass grave of her entire family on a really sad, grey day when the world was about to end it would be a thousand times more amusing. Before I explain exactly why it wasnt funny, let me recap. Theres an environmental pressure group called 10:10 which scored what they innocently imagined was the coup of having Curtis the comedy genius behind such classics as The Vicar of Dibley and Love, Actually script their new campaigning video. It was called No Pressure. The video which you can easily find on YouTube, despite belated attempts by the makers to suppress it opens with a nice, friendly teacher at an English primary school encouraging her class to think of ways of reducing their carbon footprint. One goody two-shoes suggests that she might cycle to school instead of arriving by car. The teacher is pleased with this and asks her class no pressure to stick up their hands if theyre willing to participate in the 10:10 carbonreduction campaign. All the kids bar two stick up their hands. The teacher smilingly reassures the two dissenters, Philip and Tracy, that this is not a problem no pressure but then mutters to herself that theres just one little thing she has to do

The teacher removes a few sheaves of paper from her untidy desk to reveal a red button, which she presses. Immediately, Philip explodes in a bloody pulp, splattering his screaming classmates with gore. The teacher gleefully presses the button again. This time its Tracy who explodes, to similar hideous and terrifying effect. And so on. The video went viral but not in a good way. The 10:10 website was deluged with protests, many from greens who felt betrayed. One fairly typical message said: I have supported your campaign to date, am pro-green, pro-cutting carbon emissions, and generally very environmentally conscious. I also grew up in a country where people were blown up and killed by terrorists on a daily basis. I know people who died in this way, and from this video I imagine that no one at your office, or on your creative team, has experienced this. A planned cinema release of the film was cancelled; the film was pulled from 10:10s website; and the makers were forced to issue a public apology after key sponsors including Sony began dissociating themselves from the PR disaster that bloggers were now calling splattergate. But was it all an overreaction a collective sense-of-humour failure, eagerly worked up and capitalised on by the evil climate-change-denial lobby? Thats what some environmental activists have been claiming not many, but a few. The Curtis video was funny, they insist. It was, it was! Its just that audiences were too leaden and po-faced, or maybe too biased and right-wing, to get it. So let me explain for those die-hard defenders of No Pressure why it wasnt funny on any level whatsoever. And no, it isnt because of the exploding children. Not per se. Sure, its a risky business, in the age of the suicide bomber, trying to extract comedy out of gruesomely atomised kids. But that doesnt necessarily put such things beyond the pale. In comedy nothing ought to be beyond the pale, for that is part of its purpose, as the safety valve which allows us to say the unsayable. What matters is its context and its satirical point. Only then are we in a position to judge whether the sketch works or whether it has failed horribly. Richard Curtiss No Pressure video failed horribly for the same reason that my Unfunny Observational Comics jokes fail horribly: because of what they unintentionally reveal about the creators mindset. The joke would only work if all reasonable people thought Christ, climate change deniers are a pain. Wouldnt life be so much easier if we could just tee hee kill em rather than have to engage with their tedious, action-delaying arguments? It is, as Curtiss missus Emma ought to have been able to explain, a major Freudian slip. Im sure Richard Curtis is a nice, caring man. Im sure he doesnt reeeeally want to kill me or my children for thinking wrong thoughts. (Well, I say that...) But the sketch he scripted was nonetheless highly revealing of a certain mentality among the modern green movements more committed activists: that you cant save Mother Gaia without breaking a few eggs. Not all greens think this way: the reassuringly widespread revulsion at the No Pressure videos message has been proof of that. Plenty of them do, though. After all, when your movements key influences, from Rachel Carson through Teddy Goldsmith to James Lovelock, are telling you that the human species is a cancer on the planet, what better solution could there possibly be than a spot of radical surgery?

Scientific American: Kill More Babies To Save Earth

Eugenicists push discredited overpopulation myth in pursuit of elite agenda to reduce global living standards

Image: D Sharon Pruitt Paul Joseph Watson Prison Planet.com Monday, October 18, 2010 Following the leak of a United Nations blueprint which outlined the plan to replace fearmongering about global warming with the contrived threat of overpopulation, a Scientific American report mimics precisely that talking point, pushing the notion that programs of mass abortion and birth control need to be encouraged in order to reduce the amount of humans on the planet exhaling carbon dioxide. Ultimately, family planning alone such as the use of condoms and other reproductive health services in parts of the world with growing populations, including the U.S., could restrain population growth significantly, this analysis finds, writes David Biello. To back up his argument, Biello links to an article by the completely discredited eugenicist Paul Ehrlich, who once stated that everyone will disappear in a cloud of blue steam. Ehrlich, who co-authored Ecoscience with White House Science Czar John P. Holdren, the textbook that advocates putting drugs in the water supply to sterilize people, mandatory forced abortions, and a tyrannical eco-fascist dictatorship run by a planetary regime, is infamous for his spectacularly inaccurate predictions about how overpopulation would destroy the environment. The article cited by Biello advocates a mass public relations campaign targeted at women to encourage them to have abortions in order to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. In other words, more babies need to be killed to prevent them from exhaling CO2. Coincidentally, the cover of the Scientific American issue in which the article appears features a set of human skulls.

As we revealed in a report last month, the true agenda behind fanning the flames of fears about overpopulation is to reduce living standards globally, by preventing the third world from ever becoming economically prosperous, while also eviscerating the middle classes of western nations. A leaked UN blueprint concerning the need to re-energize the move towards global government outlined a plan to re-brand global warming as overpopulation as a means of dismantling the middle classes while using global redistribution of wealth and increased immigration to reinvigorate the pursuit of a one world government. The aim of globalist institutions is to limit and redirect the aspirations for a better life of rising middle classes around the world, in other words to reduce the standard of living for the middle classes in Western Europe and America. Similarly, in his report, Biello decries the potential that richer people would lead to more consumption, once again revealing the eugenicist fervor that environmentalists embrace in deliberately preventing the third world from lifting itself out of poverty and mass starvation. In reality, whenever a country is allowed to develop and become more prosperous, population figures drop naturally, underscoring the fact that environmentalists do not really care about the threat posed by overpopulation, their primary concern is the threat posed to the elite by a stronger middle class globally. Environmental controls which prevent third world nations from developing infrastructure are fueling overpopulation, starvation and misery, which is precisely how the elitists want it to remain. Warnings about the threat posed by overpopulation are fundamentally flawed. In reality, underpopulation will be seen as the biggest danger to human prosperity in the latter half of the 21st century.

The UNs own figures clearly indicate that population is set to stabilize in 2020 and then drop dramatically after 2050. As the Economist reported, Fertility is falling and families are shrinking in places such as Brazil, Indonesia, and even parts of Indiathat people think of as teeming with children. As our briefing shows, the fertility rate of half the world is now 2.1 or lessthe magic number that is consistent with a stable population and is usually called the replacement rate of fertility. Sometime between 2020 and 2050 the worlds fertility rate will fall below the global replacement rate. Of course, the globalist agenda to reduce world population by as much as 80% in the name of saving the environment, a figure achievable only via draconian and genocidal measures, has nothing to do with the environment and everything to do with whittling down the number of slaves so that they can be more easily controlled on the plantation. Holdren and Ehrlichs eco-fascist plan to sterilize people through the water supply is already taking effect, as global sperm counts drop and gender-bending chemicals pollute our rivers and lakes, while feminizing antiandrogens are sprayed on our food in the form of pesticides. Global sperm counts have dropped by a third since 1989 and by half in the past 50 years. The rate of decline is only accelerating as more and more couples find it harder to have children. In studies of white European men, the rate of decline is as much as 50 per cent in the last 30 years. In Italy, this equates to a native population reduction of 22 per cent by 2050. Population reduction is already occurring amongst native residents in many areas of Europe and America. The agenda to reduce global population, a process that could naturally be achieved by alleviating third world poverty and lifting the living standards of people worldwide, is instead being enacted through the deliberate mass poisoning of our food and water supplies.

In addition, governments are already developing neutron bombs that destroy humans but not buildings, for extreme ethnic cleansing in an increasingly populated world, according to a 2007 British Ministry of Defence report, which predicted that their use could lead to the application of lethal force without human intervention, raising consequential legal and ethical issues. As the video below demonstrates, overpopulation is a myth. Globalists and their eugenicist minions have misrepresented population statistics for decades in order to justify their agenda to wipe out large portions of the population. If this genocidal agenda continues, humanity will go the way of the Brontosaurus.

John Lennon called it right on the overpopulation myth.

EMA: Hollywood hypocrites are saving the Earth

from The Reference Frame by Lubo Motl The Hollywood self-described "elite" are distributing the Ecoterrorist Media Awards (EMA) to each other. If your stomach is really strong, here is 18 minutes of some juicy stuff for you.

Please be careful when watching this video. If it makes you throw up, I apologize in advance. If you don't see any video, go to the individual page of this entry. Needless to say, the abbreviation EMA was chosen to partially steal the fame of the Emmy: these green nuts are parasiting on the Emmy's achievements. They're parasiting on many other things, too.

The hypocrisy of these folks is just stunning, beyond any imagination. You hear them talking - for 18 minutes - how their children are trying to save water when they brush their teeth, and similar silly stuff. But e.g. James Cameron apparently assumes that people won't be able to notice that he is using 3 houses in Malibu (24,000 sq ft in total - 10 times the average U.S. home), a 100-acre ranch in Santa Barbara, a JetRanger helicopter, three Harleys, a Corvette, a Ducati, a Ford GT, a collection of dirt bikes, a yacht, a Humvee firetruck, a fleet of submarines... Nevertheless, he demands that people live with less - the same people who made him rich by watching his movies. This probably also (or primarily?) includes other rich people. By the way, almost everyone who sees the "No Pressure" movie for the first time thinks that it had to be created by climate skeptics because it's such a painful caricature of the environmentalists' reasoning. I had thought so, too. A simple test of the data reveals that it is a real movie with the 10:10 campaign and Richard Curtis behind it. However, in the case of the Avatar, even I still cannot believe that it was meant as a serious

propaganda movie against the industry and capitalism - because if this were indeed the original purpose, then the movie had to be addressed to people whose IQ is around 75. As a propaganda display, it's just so incredibly naive... There are blue savages and they are the nice people - the third world - and then there are the white people who are the nasty capitalists who try to hurt the blue people in order to gain profit. So the corporations that produce stuff are always evil and the savages are the saints. Yes, sure. Even when I was a boy in the kindergarten, I was mature enough not to buy a similar kind of stuff, from the communists or otherwise. These people are also talking about the need to lower the world population. I apologize but it's not needed, and if it were needed, there would have to be at least some meritocracy in the process. If James Cameron et al. believe that the Earth is at existential risk because of the CO2 emissions, then any reasonable criterion would imply that James Cameron et al. would have to be among the first ones who would have to go. If you agree that the notion that the CO2 is lethally risky is preposterous and a sign of the believer's hopelessly low IQ, then James Cameron should go because the mankind can't afford to have this stupid people in it. Even if you believed that the emissions were harmful, James Cameron has to go because he's among the top 0.01% of the people who would be most harmful. There simply doesn't exist any justification of the need to lower the world population that would make the life of James Cameron sustainable. It's just amazing to think about the societal atmosphere that makes it natural for him to defend these inhuman concepts. Via Willie Soon

Climate change game launched

An educational computer game in which users have to save the world from climate change offers an interesting solution decide the problem is overpopulation and design a virus to kill millions.
Published: 7:00AM GMT 01 Nov 2010

The game takes you forward 200 years to see the outcome of your decisions, including whether major species such as the polar bear have been condemned to extinction Photo: PHOTOLIBRARY Fate of the World goes on sale on Tuesday and has been praised by gaming experts and climate campaigners as a way of reaching new audiences in the fight against carbon emissions. However, climate change sceptics may be surprised and angered by some of the strategies on offer in the game which is being released on PCs and Apple Macs. As the head of a fictional international body the user must save the world from soaring temperatures, increasing floods and deadly droughts. The game, developed by Red Redemption, an Oxford-based design company, uses real data and input from scientists and has best been described as a Football Manager for eco-enthusiasts. Users are presented with a budget, environmental data, and a series of energy policies which range from emissions caps and investment in biofuels to continue investing in fossil fuels. Other more extreme policies are also available such as creating a disease to reduce the world's population or geoengineering, such as cloud seeding from planes. The game, described on its website as a "dramatic global strategy game", takes you forward 200 years to see the outcome of your decisions, including whether major species such as the polar bear have been condemned to extinction. The blurb reads: "You must manage a balancing act of protecting the Earth. Resources and climate versus the needs of an ever-growing world population, who are demanding ever more food, power, and living space. Will you help the whole planet or will you be an agent of destruction?" joseph2000 Yesterday 12:55 PM Is this any different than the virus that is modern capitalism, a virus deliberately unleashed upon the world by free enterprise and its Conservative backers which is in the process of wiping out all animal life on this earth, ruining government finances and driving all but a select few into poverty? At least the virus in the above article is just from a funny game, but the capitalist virus (unlimited economic growth coupled with outsourcing, tax cutting and deregulation) is very real and killing as I write this.

libertyscottuk Yesterday 04:51 PM Take your pills. You're a part of capitalism, but if you want to escape it then I can recommend relocating yourself as a subsidence farmer in Chad, or defect to Pyongyang where self sufficiency and constant regulation (but no tax!). You'll learn about what kills. Animal life is not being wiped out, capitalism doesn't ruin government finances (it saves them) and life expectancy on earth is the greatest it has ever been, as living standards increase. I do wonder if the armageddon peddlers of the environmental movement are really simply unhinged or just love the idea that other people need to be told what to do, by those who know better (i.e. themselves).

Monday, 1 November 2010

Fate Of The World Climate Change Game
Fucking piss boiler of a fucking piss boiler or fucking what! The warmist wankstain brigade are at it a-fucking-gain. This time the eco terroists have decided that our kids' brains need washing with a new climate change computer game called 'Fate of the World'. It goes on sale tomorrow (3 Nov) and this 'educational game' puts the player at the head of a fictional international body where you must save the world from soaring temperatures, increasing floods and deadly droughts ... and shit.

Apparently, one of the options open to any of your kids playing the game is to decide that the planet is over populated and you can then design a virus, which will kill millions, thus reducing the amount of man made carbon emissions! What the fucking fuck were they thinking about when they decide to foist this mother fucking fascist shite on to our kids. You can take a look at all the eco terrorist twats that are responsible for it HERE. Oh, and did I mention that this is the same people that produced the BBC Climate Challenge game and that 'Fate of the World' uses real data and input from scientists? Dare say all the science and data is the 'settled' stuff though, eh. Hmmm ... and I wonder how much TV licence fee money was donated to help out with the new venture? And another thing, what the fuck is it with these eco fascists? They're fucking obsessed with killing people that disagree with them. Remember Franny Armstrong and her 10:10 'blow the kids up' video? So it's now OK to produce a computer game to force kids to learn more lies about MMGW, in the hope they go out into the big wide world and eco terrorise every fucker .... but not OK if the little bastards play shoot-em-up games and then go out into the big wide world and non-eco terrorise every fucker. Oh for fuck's sake!

All these eco terrorists really have to go .... I can't fucking see any difference between them and the brain washing Taliban fuckwits that turn their childrens' minds into terrorising non-believers of Islam. ++++ UPDATE ++++ It appears that 'Fate of the World' have a Twitter account here and a Facebook page here. I've just left a note on the eco fascists 'wall of wank' .... here's a screen grab, just in case it disappears ;-) Posted by Grumpy Old Twat at 17:55

Final solution
Posted by Richard Monday, November 01, 2010

Same idea, same techniques. The Fhrer would have been proud of them ... and the Telegraph calls designing a virus to kill millions as an "educational" exercise, an "interesting solution". The terrorists are writing the newspapers now.

Why Franny Hates Schoolchildren

Posted on November 11, 2010 by stevengoddard

One year ago this week Franny Armstrong was beaten up by a bunch of schoolgirls, and had to be rescued by London Mayor Boris Johnson who happened to be riding his bike nearby. http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/nov/03/boris-johnson-saves-franny-armstrong

Boris Johnson saves filmmaker Franny Armstrong from attack

Boris Johnson came to the recue of a high profile climate change activist and filmmaker who was being attacked by a group of young girls brandishing an iron bar, it was revealed today.

Franny Armstrong, the director of The Age of Stupid, described the mayor of London as her knight in a shining bicycle after he came to her defence as she was walking home in Camden, north London, last night. She called out for help to a passing cyclist after being surrounded by a group of hoodie-wearing young girls Mike Davis says: November 11, 2010 at 7:43 pm To much of a coincidence! The timing and players is such as to rule put chance. There is no statement that robbery was the motive. For no apparent reason a small group of teen age girls wearing hooded sweats (Hoodies) pushed Frannie against a car at the exact same time the Mayor was bicycling past so she could ask for assistance. The Mayor picked up the iron bar before riding after the girls. This would indicate the girl holding the bar dropped it and the Mayor took the time to stop his bike, get off, and pick up the bar before proceeding after the girls. As for timing, if the girls were thrill seekers they had time to do harm with the iron bar at the same time they shoved Frannie against the car and Frannie would have spent time recuperating from a fractured skull or broken arm. It looks to have been preplanned for publicity!

The Oxfam Megalodon Steeplechase

Nov 17th, 2010 by Lynne. From an article by John Vidal, Guardian blogger. Imagine an international court where the poorest people in the world could sue countries such as the US or Britain for failing to keep to agreements to reduce climate emissions or for knowingly causing devastating climate change. Imagine an international court where the science of climate change was examined and found to be causing devastating economical hardship for no good reason. Its some way off, but this week has seen an extraordinary tribunal being held in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh with more than 1,200 people including British lawyers, politicians and economists, listening to the testimonies of villagers living at the frontline of climate change. What happened to frontline putting food into the mouths of the starving then? It was only a mock tribunal, organised by Oxfam, but it explored the growing idea that the largest carbon emitters should be bound by international law to protect the lives and livelihoods of those most at risk from the impacts of climate change. In that case you wont mind me putting mock coins into Oxfam collection boxes and me giving the real stuff to the Sally Army and Age Concern from now on. Rushanara Ali, the newly-elected MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, who is already shadow minister for international development, was there along with Richard Lord QC, who will be looking at the legislation that is available for affected countries to pursue. I hoped they paid for their own travelling expenses. It wouldnt be fair to ask your donors and government taxpayers to foot the bill for this fantasy junket now would it? The stories the tribunal heard were heartbreaking. Mamtaz, one of four plaintiffs, wanted to know who was legally responsible for her fisherman husbands death. Fishing is a dangerous occupation. Shit happens. She and others testified that the seas off Bangladesh are now rougher more often and that boats were capsized more frequently in the increasingly stormy weather. Barek Majhi, a fisherman, told the tribunal how his three trawlers had sunk and ruined his means of making a living. Tell me about it. The beds of the Irish Sea, North Sea and English Channel are littered with the wrecks of fishing vessels that sank in storms over many generations. Anywhere theres a fishing industry there are casualties. What makes Bangladeshi fishermen so special? The cries for climate justice are growing stronger by the day.

Yes, but only in places like Isle of Grauniad and Beebland which are becoming increasingly desperate about the swiftly evaporating belief in the Church of AGW climate change disruption. In Latin America, President Evo Morales has formally proposed to the UN that an International Court of Climate Justice is established. It would have the capacity to restrain, prosecute and punish states, companies and people who, by act or omission, make major contributions to climate change. How about we prosecute you scumbags for fraud? Support at the World Peoples Conference on Climate Change in April has come from tens of thousands of people, including Miguel DEscoto, a former president of the United Nations, and Adolfo Prez Esquivel, who won a 1980 Nobel peace prize. Well, having seen the sub-basement calibre of the more recent UN presidents and Nobel prize winners I think Ill give that recommendation a miss if you dont mind. Im expecting the announcement of a Nobel prize for lying cunts any day now Of interest to Oxfam and even the UN could be a new paper from Field, the LondonbasedFoundation for International Environmental Law & Development. This shows how there are many existing laws and principles available for states to sue one another for damage caused by climate change, and how this could pressure nations into stronger international action. So you are going to put Mama Nature in the dock then. Cant wait to see that. Top of the list was the no-harm rule, a widely recognised principle of customary international law, which Fields lawyers say is directly applicable to climate change. Under the principle, nations are bound to prevent, reduce and control the risk of environmental harm to other nations. Your no-harm rule kills people you stupid fuckwits. The classic example of this was litigation over trans-national air pollution between Canada and the United States, where Canada was forced to compensate the US for damage caused by sulphur dioxide emissions. Lets see you try pulling that crap with the Chinese and the Indians. Oh wait, they are poor countries who you insist should be suing us because we engaged in making peoples lives better generations before they decided to do the same damn thing the same damn way. Meanwhile, senior academics, judges and lawmakers from around the world are backing the International Court for the Environment. It would be an over-arching global institution that would provide improved access to justice following incidents of environmental damage and breaches of international treaties, and would, exclusively, sit above and adjudicate on disputes arising out of UN environmental treaties, such as 1992s Convention on Biological Diversity and its Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto protocol. Oh do fuck off. Were sick to death hearing about your over-arching control freakery and naked Marxist ambition disguised as alarmist junk science. You failed to frighten us to death with visions of drowning puppies and stranded polar bears. You failed. Get over it. How many people died for want of the cash you have wasted on this AGW shit? Hundreds? Thousands? Millions?

Next time someone rattles an Oxfam collection box under my nose Im going to tell them where they can stick it and how to axially rotate it in order to maximise pain. You can read the alarmist propaganda here: Dave Sparrow says: November 17, 2010 at 10:53 pm A couple of months ago a donation packet dropped through the letterbox from Oxfam. I thought Id go and actually find out what they did these days before donating, and found pretty much the same attitude as Lynne describes. So, when two very nice ladies came to collect I politely explained I would not be donating and why not. To their credit, they were interested in what I had found and more than a little surprised. I gently suggested that they (and their fellow collectors) ought to be aware of what their target organisation was actually funding before getting involved in asking people for donations. They looked a bit upset about that as they had to agree. I have no idea if they still collect for Oxfam.

Monday, 22 November 2010

Science Fact?
I've never been a big fan of Science Fiction, although I have read a fair bit over the years. I have no time for the scary-alien stuff, but there are some very thoughtful and thought-provoking books out there. Robert Heinlein's Stranger In A Strange Land is obviously a classic of the genre, and I would also include one of the two most prescient books I have ever read, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (the other is Nineteen Eighty-Four): books that describe a possible future society, which are both believable and chilling. If SF doesn't go down the 'warring tribes' route (like the Mad Max films), then it is usually a World Government theme, where the people's freedoms have all been taken away 'for their own good', and life is superficially happy (or not) but ultimately purposeless and trivial. In the past, I have cheerfully dismissed this as - well, fiction, as that is what it was. After all, it couldn't happen here, because a) no government would want that level of control, and b) people wouldn't let it happen. No siree. Then I came across this, thanks to Cats. The article is interesting, but the real interest is in the mass of quotations which support the notion that our leaders really want a World Government, and that the climate change con is simply an instrument to get people's willing compliance for changes that will make the New World Order possible. This idea has been at the back of my mind for some time, but I have always dismissed the more extreme expressions of it as tin-hat paranoia. But the quotations in the article (and there are masses), if genuine, really frighten me. None of the quotes are referenced, and it will be a fair piece of work to track them all down and verify them, but that may be worth doing. If they are genuine, then we have a lot to be worried about, and we need to wake up to the situation fast. I won't list them all, but here are some examples: Quote by Mikhail Gorbachev, communist and former leader of U.S.S.R.: "The emerging 'environmentalization' of our civilization and the need for vigorous action in the interest of the entire global community will inevitably have multiple political consequences. Perhaps the most important of them will be a gradual change in the status of the United Nations. Inevitably, it must assume some aspects of a world government."

Quote by Gordon Brown, former British prime minister: "A New World Order is required to deal with the Climate Change crisis." Quote by David Brower, a founder of the Sierra Club: "Childbearing should be a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license. All potential parents should be required to use contraceptive chemicals, the government issuing antidotes to citizens chosen for childbearing." Quote by Club of Rome: In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill....All these dangers are caused by human intervention....and thus the real enemy, then, is humanity itself....believe humanity requires a common motivation, namely a common adversary in order to realize world government. It does not matter if this common enemy is a real one or.one invented for the purpose. Quote by Maurice Strong, a wealthy elitist and primary power behind UN throne: Isn't the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn't it our responsibility to bring that about? Quote by David Foreman, co-founder of Earth First!: My three main goals would be to reduce human population to about 100 million worldwide, destroy the industrial infrastructure and see wilderness, with its full complement of species, returning throughout the world. Quote by Robert Muller, former UN Assistant Secretary General: In my view, after fifty years of service in the United National system, I perceive the utmost urgency and absolute necessity for proper Earth government. There is no shadow of a doubt that the present political and economic systems are no longer appropriate and will lead to the end of life evolution on this planet. We must therefore absolutely and urgently look for new ways. Quote by James Lovelock, known as founder of 'Gaia' concept: I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while. Quote by Jeremy Rifkin, Greenhouse Crisis Foundation: The prospect of cheap fusion energy is the worst thing that could happen to the planet. Quote by Ted Turner, billionaire, founder of CNN and major UN donor: A total population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal. Quote by John Holdren, President Obama's science czar: "There exists ample authority under which population growth could be regulated...It has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society." Quote by UK's Keith Farnish, environmental writer, philosopher and activist: "The only way to prevent global ecological collapse and thus ensure the survival of humanity is to rid the world of Industrial Civilization...Unloading essentially means the removal of an existing burden: for instance, removing grazing domesticated animals, razing cities to the ground, blowing up dams and switching off the greenhouse gas emissions machine."

Quote by Club of Rome: "Democracy is not a panacea. It cannot organize everything and it is unaware of its own limits. These facts must be faced squarely. Sacrilegious though this may sound, democracy is no longer well suited for the tasks ahead. The complexity and the technical nature of many of todays problems do not always allow elected representatives to make competent decisions at the right time." Quote by Michael Oppenheimer, major environmentalist: "The only hope for the world is to make sure there is not another United States. We can't let other countries have the same number of cars, the amount of industrialization, we have in the US. We have to stop these Third World countries right where they are." Quote by emeritus professor Daniel Botkin :"The only way to get our society to truly change is to frighten people with the possibility of a catastrophe." Quote by Stephen Schneider, Stanford Univ., environmentalist: "That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have." Quote from Monika Kopacz, atmospheric scientist: "It is no secret that a lot of climatechange research is subject to opinion, that climate models sometimes disagree even on the signs of the future changes (e.g. drier vs. wetter future climate). The problem is, only sensational exaggeration makes the kind of story that will get politicians and readers attention. So, yes, climate scientists might exaggerate, but in todays world, this is the only way to assure any political action and thus more federal financing to reduce the scientific uncertainty." Quote by Christine Stewart, former Canadian Environment Minister: No matter if the science is all phoney, there are collateral environmental benefits.... climate change [provides] the greatest chance to bring about justice and equality in the world. Quote by Timoth Wirth, U.S./UN functionary, former elected Democrat: Weve got to ride the global-warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic policy and environmental policy. Quote by Richard Benedik, former U.S./UN bureaucrat: "A global climate treaty must be implemented even if there is no scientific evidence to back the greenhouse effect." Quote by David Frame, climate modeler, Oxford University: Rather than seeing models as describing literal truth, we ought to see them as convenient fictions which try to provide something useful. Strangely enough, the most significant of these quotations for me are the two referring to nuclear fusion: Quote by Jeremy Rifkin, Greenhouse Crisis Foundation: The prospect of cheap fusion energy is the worst thing that could happen to the planet. Quote by Amory Lovins, scientist, Rocky Mountain Institute: "Complex technology of any sort is an assault on human dignity. It would be little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy, because of what we might do with it."

I had always assumed that the Green objection to energy use, and specifically nuclear energy, was that it was environmentally damaging, and then when a clean and cheap source of energy was developed (and for my generation that has always been fusion), everyone would welcome it and be happy that all the world could share the advantages of plentiful energy that we have had for some time. Apparently not. Plentiful energy, it seems, is a Bad Thing per se, even if it does no harm to the planet. That revelation is frankly shocking to me. I can't see why anyone would object to lots of clean, cheap energy, unless they hate the human race - and that, I'm sorry to say, seems to be a constant theme of the discourse. Go and have a read - there are tons more like these. We need to wake up to this. Posted by Richard at 16:23 Richard said... I agree that a lot of the quotes above are opinion, and the list is a very mixed bag, ranging from the anti-human comments of unknown Malthusians, right up to remarks by wellknown politicians. What I would like to do is to track down every one of those quotes and get a proper reference so they can be verified and put into context. After that little exercise, it might be easier to sort the wheat from the chaff. However, my main reason in posting was not the climate change thing, or the population thing; it was the 'world government' thing, which to me was a bit of a surprise. Perhaps I am too innocent, but I thought that NWO was a conspiracy theory - many of the quotes here rather suggest that, to the people at the top, it's more than that. It opened my eyes a bit, in the same way that they would if I read a secret email from Bush to Blair saying "bringin' down them thar twin towers was the best thing we ever did, and thanks for the Semtex". Well, maybe not quite, but you get the picture. The admissions about how the climate 'evidence' is being deliberately exaggerated/invented for political reasons is quite revealing, too. 22 November 2010 20:24

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

This is what climate extremism has brought us too.
Fuel bills are high in the UK, some of it is down to the fact that foreign ownership of UK energy firms is used to subsidise foreign fuel prices, but a lot of it has to do with the climate levy that's added on to every household and industrial bill to "save the planet from climate change." The higher costs to industry also mean that higher costs of other services are passed on to us, it's a vicious cycle. What it means in reality is that people, particularly the old and vulnerable die as they count the pennies and make decisions on the grounds of stay warm or eat. One of the measures of civilisation is how we treat our old folk, in the UK, it's not terribly well. Express. THOUSANDS of pensioners died from cold-related illnesses last winter as heating bills soared and temperatures plummeted, official figures reveal. The number of deaths linked to the cold between December and March reached 25,400 in England and Wales, with another 2,760 in Scotland.

The figures are equivalent to nine deaths every hour. The total gave Britain the highest winter death rate in northern Europe, worse than much colder countries such as Finland and Sweden. There are fears the death toll could increase this year following energy price rises which may frighten elderly people into not turning on their heating. Michelle Mitchell, of Age UK, said: Its unacceptable that tens of thousands more older people die in this country every winter from the effects of the cold weather. The fact that the UK has one of the highest winter mortality rates in Europe makes it clear this is very much a home-grown problem. Behind these statistics lie deep-seated social issues, such as one in three over-60s living in houses which fail the decent home standard. According to the weather forecasts we're in for a particularly cold winter, though as they struggle to tell us what the weather will be like the day after tomorrow such predictions can be taken with a pinch of salt, or not, only time will tell, though I do reckon we're overdue a bad winter. There's no doubt though, pensioners will die this winter due to the cold, it could be worse if we have a flu epidemic on top of it too. However government and environmentalists are adamant that better insulation rather than cheaper electricity and gas is the way to go, though few pensioners can afford either. Of course there's the suspicion that some environmentalists want a cull of the human race anyway, though pensioners is the wrong target group, still I suppose it would reduce the pensions deficit too from a strictly pragmatic government view. A large majority in the UK now either totally disbelieve man made climate change, or think it doesn't matter, it's time the government caught up with this view too. Remove the green levy and keep our pensioners warm this winter and bring prices down elsewhere, give us all a break from the holier than thou environmental movement who should never have been put into a position to influence policy on this scale ever.

Posted by Quiet_Man at 12:53 PM

Eco-Fascists Call For Prison Cities

Obey enviro-tyranny or be banished to the ghetto, threatens new government-funded propaganda piece

Paul Joseph Watson Prison Planet.com Thursday, January 6, 2011

People who resist the state controlling every aspect of their existence will be forced to live in squalid ghettos while the rest of the population will be tightly controlled in high-tech prison cities thats the future envisaged by eco-fascists who are exploiting the contrived global warming fraud to openly flaunt their plan for the total enslavement of mankind. The threat posed by the kind of scenario being promoted by Forum for the Future, the group responsible for the chilling video below, cannot be emphasized enough. The dictatorial hellhole of 2040, where cars will be banned, meat rationed, farming completely abolished and overtaken by the state, behavior catalogued on calorie cards, and careers ordained by the government, is the ultimate goal of the control freaks who have seized the reigns of the environmental movement.

Nearly every aspect of the policies undertaken by the global dictatorship that runs the plannedopolis depicted in the video are lifted wholesale from historical tyrannies. - The state completely taking over the means of food production and farming. This is a throwback to the Soviet system of collectivized farming, where Stalin organized land and labor into large-scale collective farms. Farmers who resisted the state taking over their farms were arrested and sent to Siberian gulags. As a result of the mass seizure of property and the disruption that collective farming brought to food production, upwards of 3 million people died from starvation from 1932-33 alone. A similar system imposed in Maoist China under the Great Leap Forward led to the Great Chinese Famine and the starvation of at least 36 million people. - The incarceration of resistors to green fascism inside squalid ghettos and their subsequent separation from family members is a frightening throwback to the Nazi-run Warsaw Ghetto and other concentration camps and prisons within cities that housed Jews and political dissidents during World War Two. - The restriction or even outlawing of meat, something already being vehemently pushed by ecofascists, to the point where a hamburger becomes a rare delicacy to be enjoyed on special occasions and only then if you can afford it. As my wife who is Chinese will attest, up until the late 80s before China started to lift itself out of poverty, meat was a rare treat that was sparsely available and highly restricted. Again, the planned-opolis is nothing less than a fusion of Communist and fascist control measures inflicted upon the population to keep them poor, starving and weak. The people who produced this video, funded by monolithic elitist banks and corporations like Royal Dutch Shell and Bank of America as well as the British government, know very well that every aspect of their planned-opolis is lifted directly from the most abhorrent and brutal dictatorships in history. They are openly flaunting the neo-fascist ideology behind the green movement. Of course, as is made clear in the video, none of these regulations or controls will apply to any of the elitists imposing them on the rest of us. Think Al Gore and his multiple oceanside mansions with heated swimming pools. They will still be able to roll around in SUVs and fly private jets while quaffing the finest fillet steak and belching tons of CO2 as they lecture the rest of humanity about their carbon footprint. Think Prince Charles and his insistence that the proles not be allowed to take baths as he lounges in the luxuriant splendor of royal palaces. They are also engaged in a ploy to shift the parameters of the Overton Window - which is defined as A range of policies considered to be politically acceptable in the current climate of public opinion. By constantly bombarding us with extreme and repugnant proposals, they gradually wear

down the human psyche until people begin to accept draconian controls over their personal life as normal, necessary and reasonable. This is part of the reason behind last years splattergate controversy, where global warming alarmists again funded by government and big business produced an infomercial in which children who refused to lower their carbon emissions were slaughtered in an orgy of blood and guts. This is a psychological attack and a realization of the stepping stone method to tyranny. Whereas we might not accept cars being banned and meat being rationed now, we will accept incandescent light bulbs being outlawed and paying carbon taxes on fuel. As each hurdle is cleared, the globalists propose something more extreme so that we will always come to a compromise and accept a slighter lesser tyranny, but in the long term, the elitists achieve all of their goals with aplomb. And to top it all off, the debate between the liberals over at the Guardian website in response to this story did not revolve around a castigation of this authoritarian future hell, but a question of whether old people should merely be advised by government workers how to kill themselves when they reach 65, or whether the state should just kill them directly. This kind of despotic destiny is not only being pushed by the elite, it has an army of greenwashed zombies behind it who have been recruited to make the democide of the elderly (the useless eaters) an intellectually acceptable and reasonable idea. Presumably, the disabled and the mentally ill will also be exterminated in the pursuit of a highly efficient planned-opolis, another idea of which Hitler would have vehemently approved. Once government is given the power to kill anyone they deem to be unproductive in this collectivist Orwellian nightmare, the gates of hell are thrown wide open. In comparison, meat rationing, carbon taxes, eco-surveillance, calorie credits and transport restriction will seem like a walk in the park. Alex Jones seminal film Endgame, released in 2007, warned precisely of the kind of hi-tech slave grids being implemented that are now routinely proposed by top eco-fascist organizations. We urge you to warn everyone you know about this agenda and to stand up in unison to resist the first great assault on human liberty of the 21st century, which is now certain to be inflicted on us under the guise of saving mother earth. We either stop this now, or we end up in the eco-ghettos that our masters have readied for us in their planned-opolis of 2040.

One Law for Tree, Another for Ewe

from Climate Resistance by Ben Pile This is Polly Higgins, shes a barrister, and an eco-warrior. She wants there to be an international law to punish ecocide. This is why this is an absurd idea, in case it wasnt already obvious. Higgins idea is that ecocide is

the extensive destruction, damage to or loss of ecosystem(s) of a given territory, whether by human agency or by other causes, to such an extent that peaceful enjoyment by the inhabitants of that territory have been severely diminished There are already many problems with this idea, and it has only just been taken out of its box. The biggest problem is that the extensive destruction, damage to or loss of ecosystem(s) of a given territory has happened spontaneously, or naturally, throughout history. Perhaps in the same way, entire groups of people have perished. But we would not call the death of a given population of people through plague, famine, or some other natural catastrophe genocide, which is what Higgins wants us to understand ecocide as equivalent to. And by the same token, there has never been a natural genocide. You couldnt try nature for the spontaneous transformation of forest into savannah or desert, nor for the emergence or passing of an ice age. Yet these things surely are nothing but the extensive destruction, damage to or loss of ecosystem(s) of a given territory which severely diminishes the peaceful enjoyment by the inhabitants of that territory. So in order to cope with this problem, Higgins makes a distinction between ascertainable ecocide: deforestation, oil spills, fossil fuel extraction, pollution-dumping; and non-ascertainable ecocide: tsunami, earthquake, typhoon, Act of God. The line of interest here is that ecocide is caused by human agency or by other causes, but its only ecocide that is caused by human agency which is pertinent. Several new problems emerge. 1. Is ascertainable ecocide (deforestation, oil spills, fossil fuel extraction, pollution-dumping) a problem for the inhabitants of [a] territory, if it is not the case that peaceful enjoyment by the inhabitants of that territory have been severely diminished? This is the if a tree falls in the forest and there is nobody to hear it, does it still make a sound question for the eco-lawer-warrior. 2. Is there not an acceptable level of diminished peaceful enjoyment by the inhabitants of that territory, and what is it? That is to say, surely we accept the occasional oil spill, because pulling oil out of the ground creates many new possibilities for human life, which are not possible otherwise. Put another way, isnt the occasional disturbance of peaceful enjoyment by the inhabitants of [some] territory the price of a better condition of existence? Before any light is shed on these questions, Higgins outlines the concept of crimes against peace, which have already been established, and which are tried in the International Criminal Court (ICC). The existing crimes against peace are crimes against people: genocide, crimes against humanity, war crime, crime of aggression. They are, according to Higgins:

a) Principles of universal validity which apply to civilisation as a whole b) The prohibition of certain behaviour c) Universally outlawed d) morality based on the sacredness of life

These definitions are somewhat redundant. Principles of universal validity which apply to civilisation as a whole, for instance means no more than law. And most laws are to some extent the prohibition of certain behaviour. Point c Universally outlawed is a mere restatement of a and b. Higgins could have shed as much light on crimes against peace by saying laws are laws.

In essence, says Higgins, a crime against peace is a morality based on the sacredness of life. Can she really mean that? Genocide is a crime against peace, so a simple substitution of equivalent terms gives us the following paraphrase: Genocide is a morality based on the sacredness of life. It should be clear here that Higgins is talking gobbledegook. To be charitable (or rather, to give sense to her proposition such that we can take issue with it) what she seems to want to say is that life is sacred, and that therefore there is a moral imperative to protect life, and that the laws which prohibit crimes against peace are intended to serve that imperative. The laws and the crimes they prohibit are not a morality; laws are not morality, and morality is not law. One can act morally outside of the law, and conversely one can act immorally within the law, and one can seek to turn moral ideas into laws, but they will never be equivalents. Higgins, the barrister, has presumably studied law, and so really ought to be aware of the distinction. Moreover, Higgins should be aware of the distinction between a crime and a law. The difficulty Higgins has with a clear exposition of the crimes against peace and their philosophical basis is owed to the fact that she wants to make them do what they were not actually designed to do. Higgins wants to extend crimes against peace to protect all life, whereas they are originally conceived to protect only human life. That is to say that the moral foundation of the laws prohibiting crimes against peace is the understanding of the sacredness of human life, not life in general. Thus her list a through c is designed to sound like a plausible set of premises, but in fact are tautologous, ultimately meaningless, and are not reflected in the wider literature about crimes against peace. For instance, if you search for these expressions on Google, you will find that it returns results that link mainly to discussions about Higgins own conception of ecocide, not international law. Thus this outline of crimes against peace is very much unique to Higgins. So it is only after her reinvention of crimes against peace that they become about protecting the well being of life, and a sleight of hand allows her to extend this to the well being of all life as though she had only made a minor adjustment to the language: These crimes are put in place to protect and uphold the well-being of life. Im proposing that we extend that definition to including a fifth crime. And that is the crime of ecocide. And we extend the well being of life to not just human life, but to all life. But this is far more than a minor adjustment to the language. It is a complete re-writing of the language and its meanings, and the philosophical underpinnings. Now we have an answer to our two questions from the first film. The inhabitants who are the victims in the definition of ecocide: the extensive destruction, damage to or loss of ecosystem(s) of a given territory, whether by human agency or by other causes, to such an extent that peaceful enjoyment by the inhabitants of that territory have been severely diminished are any entity which is life. I.E. the members of the ecosystem are the inhabitants of an ecosystem. Tree, bug, germ, mouse, bush, mushroom are all now protected by the law prohibiting ecocide.

So the most obvious (and fatal) problem for Higgins definition of ecocide is that it should only be prohibited by law if we hold with its premise that all life is sacred. Some people may well believe such a thing, but they are few and far between, and there is no automatic reason to assume that people would necessarily agree with this, in the way that we can expect people to have mutual regard for human life. That should be enough to show that ecocide should not be made a crime. It is a matter of conscience, perhaps. But not a matter for courts of law. Nonetheless, there emerge some curious contradictions and redundancies from the original conception, which reveal more about Higgins thinking in particular, and of environmentalism in general. On Higgins view, human agency makes humans subject to the law prohibiting ecocide in order to protect all life. But the definition does not protect all life from itself, nor humans from other organisms. Humans, then, are exceptional, in that the faculty of agency makes it possible for them to be culpable, yet is not understood to give them any privilege, nor even any protection from the elements, or from any natural thing. This is remarkable, because human agency is the exclusively human attribute from which the premise that all human life is sacred emerges. It is the faculty of agency which makes human life sacred. Only a human can reason about the sacredness of anything, be it humanity, pig, or life. This is the premise of the international laws intended to protect human dignity from systematic degradation: mass murder, humiliation, persecution, and so on. But the object of sacredness in Higginss view is in the first instance human life as a mere biological process, not human life as a mere condition of agency. Higgins misses the very important thing about human life: it is experienced; it has purpose, intention, values. Instead, on Higgins view, the thing which gives human life its identity is agency as though it were some arbitrary characteristic, such as extravagant plumage, adaptation to a particular ecological niche, or some well-developed instinct that makes it subject to laws. Higgins has denied the very thing which made crimes against peace particular to humans. The consequence of her move from human exceptionalism to anti-humanism is that she commits the crimes that the definition of crimes against peace were designed to prohibit: she degrades humanity. She credits humans with less moral worth than slugs and toads, not merely because she privileges some abstract notion of life over being alive, but because she turns agency which ought to be a characteristic that privileges human life into something which makes humans obliged to endure life within natural limits, while being the only organism capable of both endurance, and conceiving of a means to improve it: chopping down forests; drilling for oil, coal and gas; eradicating pests and diseases; intensive agriculture, etc.. etc.. This is what is meant on this blog by anti-humanism. It runs deep throughout environmentalism. Yet it is presented by environmentalists as a straightforward telling of the facts. More trivially, perhaps, is the redundancy within the definition of the crime. the extensive destruction, damage to or loss of ecosystem(s) of a given territory, whether by human agency or by other causes, to such an extent that peaceful enjoyment by the inhabitants of that territory have been severely diminished Now we know that the word inhabitants means any living thing, and that living things comprise ecosystems, and that ecosystems are geographically bounded, we can again substitute equivalent terms in the expression to produce the following absurdity:

the extensive destruction, damage to or loss of ecosystem(s) of a given ecosystem(s), whether by human agency or by other causes, to such an extent that peaceful enjoyment by the ecosystem(s) of that ecosystem(s) have been severely diminished Higgins admits as much in a circuitous rewording of an existing crime against peace that protects the environment, the emphasis of which she again moves from people to all life in general. widespread long-term and severe damage to the natural environment which would be clearly excessive in relation to the concrete and direct overall COMMUNITY advantage anticipated = the extensive damage to the ecosystem(s) = Ecocide The law Higgins modifies had obviously been designed to protect those caught up in a war from aggressors damaging the productive capacity of the land. The law was never designed to protect nature or life in general. But through word play, and after concealing the basis for the law, Higgins radically transforms its purpose. The word community had previously been military. Thus prohibiting any force from causing damage to the resources on which human populations depend, in order to inflict punitive or malicious damage to that population. The natural environment gets substituted for ecosystems and the word community gets substituted, again, for the members of ecosystems, i.e. all life. So once again, the substitution reveals the tautology. widespread long-term and severe damage to ecosystem(s) which would be clearly excessive in relation to the concrete and direct overall ecosystem(s) advantage anticipated. Clearly there are problems now with the proportion of any ecocide crime. Ecocide could almost be any crime, otherwise. Chopping down a tree would deprive the community of its ecosystem. Is chopping down a tree ecocide? Two trees? A small forest? To establish some proportion, Higgins establishes some existing legislation might be useful, with the definition of size, duration and impact. Size can be easily established, according to Higgins by doing things like looking at satellite images to gauge the extent of deforestation, for instance. Various agencies monitor the depletion of species, she says, and this information could be made available. The recent Mexican gulf oil spill is given as an example of long-term extensive damage. Leaving aside the questions that exist about the actual extent of the damage caused by the oil spill, and taking Higgins claims at face value, the spill would surely not fall under either category of ascertainable ecocide or non-ascertainable ecocide. After all, it wasnt a deliberate leaking of oil into the ocean. And to compare it to the existing equivalent, genocide, no Nazi would have been able to pretend that they accidentally murdered 6 million Jews. It wasnt human agency which caused the oil spill, because agency isnt a factor in the kind of negligence that would cause an accident. Moreover, since it is people, and not abstract agencies such as companies that she wants to try, it would be hard to locate the individuals responsible in such a huge operation. Yet presumably, she wants to hold BPs directors who likely had little to do with the actually technical process to account. Again, the concept of agency in Higgins understanding is limited, and only serves to make humans morally culpable, without being in fact independent moral agents. Higgins moves on to establish why it is necessary to make ecocide a crime. Says Higgins 1. 100 living species become extinct 2. 1,000 acres of peat bogs are excavated

3. 4. 5. 6.

150,000 acres of tropical rainforest are destroyed 2 million tons of toxic waste is dumped 22 million tons of oil are extracted 100 million tons of GHGs are released each day

These look like dramatic figures. But the basis for #1 at least, can be ignored straight away as completely alarmist. The definition of species is not particularly robust, and the only way that the existence of a species can be established is by a positive identification. The non-existence of a species can only be established by looking everywhere, simultaneously an impossibility. These results are the product of a model, and the model itself is going to contain far more assumptions than facts. And just as the notion of species is ambiguous, so too is the definition of extinction. The weakest of all material claims made by environmentalists are about biodiversity and extinction. We can also ask so what to the remaining questions. What is the problem of 1,000 acres of peat bog being excavated? What value does peat have, while it merely sits there, being peat? And isnt Higgins also against the extraction of fossil fuels which would make it unnecessary to extract peat if its being used for energy? How much rainforest is really being destroyed? Where? and isnt it also true that many parts of the world are seeing massive reforestation? And again, isnt it the case that the real saviour of the forests is the oil well? If theres oil and coal available, who in their right mind would want to use wood? The UN, says Higgins, as though it were an authority, says that ecosystems are at tipping point, as if that meant anything. But it doesnt. What is a tipping point? More to the point, what is an ecosystem, and how is it determined what its tipping point actually is? Nobody knows. Onto this bogus ecological reasoning, Higgins adds the headline findings from an attempt to determine the financial value of ecosystem services, and the damage to them that has been caused by corporates. Between $2.2 and $4 trillion, she claims, of ecocide. But is this spurious figure a big price for the benefit? Whats the point of assessing costs without assessing benefits? Dont ask the UKs former chief prognosticator, Sir David King, who believes that the conflicts in Dafur and Iraq are fought for water and oil respectively, and that as such, we can say that this century will be the century of resource wars. But what does a scientist know about wars, and why they are fought? The claims can be easily dismissed. Dafur is a region that has historically experienced long and deep periods of drought mother natures own form of ecocide; and before either of the military campaigns in the gulf, the price of oil stood stable at around $20/barrel. At such low prices, the real problem is not resource scarcity, but on the contrary, its over abundance. David Kings advice to the government is as ill-conceived as Higgins; yet King was actually appointed. The lunatics are running the asylum. But if only it was as simple as madness We have to break the cycle, says Higgins, of ecocide>resource-depletion>conflict>war. She demands that it be broken urgently. But her claims are premature. A recent study in PNAS concluded that Scientific claims about a robust correlational link between climate variability and civil war do not hold up to closer inspection. [...] The graph shows change in the estimated probability of civil war (five variants) for six alternative climate measures, based on 1,000 simulations for each model specification. Given the feeble impact of climate, illustrating the range of uncertainty is more meaningful than plotting point estimates of predicted probabilities. In all but one of the specifications, the 95% confidence bands for the climate variables include both positive and negative effects. Moreover, neither temperature nor precipitation performs

consistently across models as even the sign of the mean first difference estimate for a given variable is sensitive to model specification. Only the final model (5f in Fig. 2) returns a statistically significant climate parameter estimate; apparently, major civil war years (i.e., years with at least 1,000 battle deaths) are more frequent in years following unusually wet periodsa result that directly contradicts the notion of scarcity-induced conflicts. As has been argued on this blog, the naturalisation of complex social phenomena such as conflict and poverty is one of the most damaging things about environmentalism. Now we can see this danger made real in the prose of Higgins argument. She pretends that a law abolishing ecocide will prevent war. But surely the reality is the opposite. The implication that wars are fought for resources should create an imperative to locate more resources, and better ways of using them. But instead, Higgins wants us to reduce the production of water, and oil. Far from reducing the possibility of resource wars, by limiting their supply, environmentalism and environmental institutions such as laws against ecocide will make them happen. Higgins now moves to consider lessons from history. And this is something weve all seen before: the comparison of arguments against environmental regulation with arguments against the abolition of slavery. Slavery is a topic discussed on this blog here, here, and here. And as we point out, the comparison of making equivalents of using oil and using slaves depends on the degraded understanding of what makes slavery wrong in the first place. It should be no surprise that somebody who only holds with the limited understanding of human agency that Higgins has should find it easy to draw a comparison between denying humans the right to express their freedom and filling up the car. Listen carefully to Higgins narrative: We can see what happened 200 years ago with the aboltion of slavery. At that time there were 300 companies trading either directly or indirectly in slaves. There were 600 million slaves on the market. What we had there was upstream, the traders who were the 300 companies and downstream we had the 6,000 consumers. They were the end users. In 1810 200 years ago there were just 1 billion people on the planet. The graphic says differently, but in the voice over, Higgins claims that 600 million of them were slaves. I assume that she intended to say that there were 6 million slaves, but that she got confused. But the mistake it speaks generally about her lack of fluency with the facts shes using that she didnt spot her mistake as she said it, nor even in post production, nor even in watching it since it has been published. But the figure is meaningless in any case. Slavery, of course, only features in this argument to provide a moral absolute: something were already committed to. Its a lazy way of making an argument. And it gets more sloppy. The abolitionists strategy was to turn off the supply of slaves, and so it is with resource exploitation: we should turn off supply. We should make those responsible for supplying resources also responsible for ecocide. And the arguments against abolishing slavery look like the arguments against environmental legislation. Even if this is true which seems unlikely, unless you think that a barrel of oil ought to have legal rights its true only by virtue of the facts of the market. Arguments about the regulation of any trade will take a similar form, because, although the commodities in question may be different, the mechanism of their exchange is always similar. Thats the point of capital: it permits the exchange of things of different types: labour, wool, coal, and food have little in common as substances, but can be exchanged for money, and vice-versa. There is absolutely nothing of interest, therefore, in the comparisons Higgins draws. Higgins now considers some institutions that already exist, which may serve the aim of fighting ecocide. Theres not much to say about the nonsense, except to say that she again extends the definition of existing legal definition to encompass all organisms, not merely people. She then

extends this further to argue that We need now to move towards protecting all community interests. So that would be the water, as well as the soils, as well as the air, as well as the land, as well as the species who live within that territory. It would not be able to exist as an organism in the world Higgins wants to create. Ecocide is already understood as a moral crime, says Higgins, it just needs to be made formal. But how true is this? It may well be true that oil spills and the like cause public anger. But this is largely because it has an effect on people, and that such a mess for both humans and wildlife might, in many cases, have been avoided by due care. The claim that the public reaction to environmental disaster legitimises the creation of a law banning ecocide is a stretch: most people do not think that trees, nor water, air and land, have rights. Punishing ecocide with fines doesnt work, says Higgins, only incarceration provides the disincentive necessary to prevent it. She would lock up CEOs, heads of states, heads of financial institutions. These people would not want to jeopardise their liberty, and so would refuse to permit, or involve themselves with anything likely to cause ecocide. Thus they are turned from planetdestroyers into planet-savers. Meanwhile, of course, nothing would happen. No mining of energy. No economic or technological development. No chemical production. No industrial agriculture. No hospitals. No schools. No Factories. There could only be subsistence lifestyles in Higgins bleak Utopia. Higgins now summarises her argument, begining with an account of strict liability as it stands in the UK. Parliament creates an offence of strict liablity because it regards the doing or not doing of a particular thing itself so undesirable as to merit the imposition of a criminal punishment on anyone irrespective of that partys knowledge, state of mind, belief or intention. The involves a departure from the prevailing cannons of the criminal law because of the importance which is attached to achieving the result which Parliament seeks to achieve. On this basis, shouldnt proposing the crime of ecocide should fall into this category? It is a disgusting idea, which degrades the very concept of humanity, making the human no more significant before the law than an ant, worm, or for that matter, germ Except that, unlike animals, humans can be tried and punished. This idea, then, is worse even than the medieval practice of trying animals as happened throughout Europe. Infestations of rats, insects, leeches would result in their being summoned before a court, and threatened with excommunication. They were, as beings in creation, subject to Gods law, and as such were given legal representation, and often won, leaving humans to suffer. It took the enlightenment to end such practice. And it was in this era that the concept of humanity developed, such that we would now see the summoning of an animal to court, or extending rights to animals as legal subjects as ridiculous. Until now, that is. Higgins, who wants to extend legal rights to trees and insects the wider earth community epitomises the end of humanism: View the planet as an inert thing, and what we do is we impose a value. We commoditise the planet. That is property law. View the planet as a living being, and we recognise the intrinsic value, and we take responsibility. What was discovered during the enlightenment was that nature has no intrinsic value. Value is an inherently human concept. Only humans valorise. Nothing else is capable of understanding value.

Without humans, then, the planet really is inert. Moreover, it is evident that the planet is not a living being no planet is a living being. By presupposing a value for the planet as a living being Higgins reduces the whole of humanity into merely another species, and this creates the basis of a system of law a powerful set of institutions to extend the reach of her poisonous ideas. As I pointed out in the previous post, Higgins wants to replace the tyranny that exists as a figment of her imagination as a real, functioning, institution: eco law, which punishes eco criminals. The real purpose of eco law is to create an eco-tyranny, in control of resources in exactly the way Higgins imagines EON to be. If the law is an ass, its mother, the law-maker is presumably not going to be troubled by the family resemblance being pointed out she is after all, by her own admission, no better than any other inhabitant of the wider earth community. It seems unlikely that her ideas will ever be realised, because there would be a very real fight about any such law and the institutions to serve it being created. Yet having said that, there remains an important question. How is it possible that someone can come to embrace these absurd ideas without seeming to have reflected at all critically on their soundness, and their consequences? If it can happen to Higgins, cant it happen to any other ecoloon in a position of power? This blog has argued previously that environmentalists have tended to alienate themselves through the expression of their own ideas in the public sphere. Maybe this has two implications. First, we should openly point at and mock Higgins and any institution that gives her ideas positive space: the Guardian, and the UN, in this case. Second, we should take more seriously the fact that the positive developments that the last few centuries of human history have produced seem to be disappearing from public debate. We now have Higgins demanding a forced march back beyond the dark ages. We should be sure about what we are defending, and not imagine that this is just a debate about whether or nor climate change is happening that can be settled with the correct scientific account. Its bigger than that, and even climate change alarmists should be concerned about what Higgins proposes.

Queensland floods: but at least the 'endangered' Mary River cod is safe, eh?
By James Delingpole Politics Last updated: January 11th, 2011

This is a guest post from one of our regular commenters, Memory Vault. Hes understandably upset about the Australian floods, which may have claimed more than 70 lives. But what really upsets him is that this disaster could have been prevented. He blames green campaigners so wedded to their ideology they never stop to consider the human consequences. It is to them his bitter letter is addressed. Andrew Bolt has similarly harsh words for Australias eco nuts. Were it not for the actions of Environment Minister Peter Garrett, for example, the Queensland town of Gympie would not now be underwater. Unfortunately, Garrett took it upon himself to block the proposed dam that would have prevented it. Federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett on Wednesday said he made the interim decision to reject the controversial $1.8 billion plan to dam the Mary River because evidence showed it could kill off endangered species. He made the interim decision to reject the controversial $1.8 billion plan to dam the Mary River because evidence showed it could kill off endangered species The project would have serious and irreversible effects on national listed species such as the Australian lungfish, the Mary Riveyr turtle and the Mary River cod both of those endangered. Here is Memory Vaults post. It is addressed to the climate trolls who haunt this blog, forever assuring us with their characteristic shrill certainty, that the science is now settled and that we sceptics are greedy, selfish fools. I am sitting here in my home in South East Queensland, watching the news come in about the flooding everywhere. Entire suburbs around Brisbane and several smaller towns are either isolated by flood-waters or have been evacuated. Highways are cut everywhere. People have been dying. So far about 20 people have died in the past week nine just this morning when a deluge went through the Lockyer Valley. Most of them children. Another 70 are missing. One could put it all down to just weather. Except EXACTLY the same floods occurred in EXACTLY the same places back in 1974, with much the same tragic loss of life and destruction of property.

Back then we werent nearly as clever and learned as you think yourselves to be today. Back then we had this silly notion that climate was cyclical, and if we didnt prepare for it, we would have a repeat of the same tragedies to deal with in about thirty years. That was the thinking of the scientists back then that climate went in roughly thirty year cycles. Flood mitigation programs were planned. A series of levee banks and diversionary dams would be built. Brisbane and SE QLD would NEVER suffer such devastation again. After all, we had thirty years to plan and build and improve. And thats what we did or at least started. Wivenhoe Dam got built as the first step, but by the time it was finished clever people like you lot who knew that such things were never going to happen again had taken over. CO2 AGW madness had already taken hold. Instead we had post modern minds like Tim Flannery advising the government that because of Anthropogenic Global Warming, SE QLD would be perpetually in drought from then on. Forget dams and flood mitigation programs, intoned the wise Dr Tim build desalination plants instead. So thats what our government did. And that is why thirty five years later, we are once again suffering exactly the SAME tragic loss of life and destruction of property, pretty-much exactly where, and when, and how, those stupid scientists who foolishly believed climate was cyclical had predicted. Meanwhile our billion dollar desalination plant is quietly being mothballed, and emergency crews are frantically trying to work out how they might be able to save nineteen thousand homes from destruction in the next couple of days, as the Lockyer deluge hits Brisbane. Wise Dr Tim Flannery has been made Australian of the Year for his contributions. I google on the internet for climate extremes and climate-related disasters in the 1972 1979 period the period of the last transition in the natural weather cycle, and I find that it wasnt a good period in many places around the world. Record and near record high and low temperatures, record and near-record precipitation, and so on. Floods and droughts pretty-much mimicking what is happening now, and in pretty-much the same places. I also noted that the indicators of the silly theory of the cyclical nature , ocean and atmospheric, are pretty much exactly as they are now. I have to admit it could all get a bit depressing. But then I remember that the world is in the capable hands of much cleverer people than those silly scientists back in the Seventies who believed climate was cyclical. Now the decisions are being made by clever people like Dr Tim Flannery and you. That is when I weep for my fellow Man.

Green Writer for BBC, Guardian, Demands: End Farming, Dismantle Civilization.
Posted on January 27, 2011 by hauntingthelibrary

Dr John Feeney is a prominent green campaigner who has written for the Guardian newspaper, the BBC, and many other Green journals and websites. He was the winner of the 2007 ECO award. In 2009 he received the Global Media award from the Population Institute for his work. Now this award-winning Greenie has joined the growing list of ecologists and activists who are saying that the root of the problem is agriculture, which enables humans to circumvent natures sacred limits and build earth-destroying civilizations. Like many others, he accuses us of being in denial over the need to return to a hunter-gatherer way of life: The problem of agriculture is in part a problem of human numbers. Before farming human population size had been regulated by the same process that works for black bears, dingos, bonobos, rainbow trout, and long-tailed parakeets. It works for all species, generally keeping their numbers within carrying capacity. Its simple: Population follows food supply. Normal oscillations in available food exert multiple small, cumulative, typically painless infuences on fertility and mortality. With agriculture we circumvented this process. Growing and storing food we could go on growing our food supply. The result has been predictable: more humans. Canyon County Zephyr. Agriculture: The End of the World As We Know It. Ah, yes. Overpopulation. At the heart of the global warming movement, just like the rest of the socalled crises, is the deep and abiding belief of Greenies that there are just far too many of you. Feeney believes that farming has caused a steep decline in health as well as social hierarchies, sexual inequality, famine, slavery, time clocks, money, and a massive upscaling of violence. He agrees with Jared Diamonds characterization of farming as the worst mistake in the history of the human race and with Paleontologist Niles Eldredges comment that to develop agriculture is essentially to declare war on ecosystems.. Feeney believes that once civilizations crumble a better future awaits us as hunter-gatherers beyond civilization It is of course not only our numbers which will come to an end. Civilization is made possible by agriculture. Agriculture is unsustainable. If it werent obvious already, you can see where this is going. Theres no predicting the timeline of civilizations collapse. Technofxes and any resiliency industrial society possesses may draw it out. No matter, a better future, indeed the only future for humanity and the rest of Earths inhabitants is one beyond civilization. Feeney believes that this shift is unlikely to happen voluntarily and says hard choices, possibly involving the loss of life, will have to be made by those who understand that we cannot allow civilization to continue: But despite converging ecological catastrophes we show few signs of such a massive, voluntary shift. Those with vested interests in the status quo see to that. So writers such as Zerzan and Derrick Jensen advocate a purposeful resistance movement designed to hasten civilizations end . . . Says Jensen today, Systems of power are created by humans and can be stopped by humans. Those in power are never supernatural or immortal, and they can be brought down. Though this raises the frightening specter of triggering loss of life before it would happen otherwise, the argument is that bringing down civilization sooner would leave more life intact than would a delayed and drawn out collapse. We face hard choices.

Though Feeney is pessimistic about a voluntary shift to end civilization, he takes heart from the work of fellow activists who acknowledge a collapse of civilization is inevitable and work with zest toward a shift to a tribal, wild way of living. He concludes with the thought that however the collapse of civilization and the end of farming is achieved, it must happen, as its not sustainable Whatever our course, we have only to consider the agricultural origins of our ecological crisis to understand civilization is an unsustainable trap. John Feeney lives in Colorado with his family. Presumably not just on nuts, berries and whatever they can hunt down, as he has an internet connection. He is the creator of the PopulationSpeakOut website. StrongStyle81 | January 28, 2011 at 1:10 am Over the past couple of months Ive been noticing a correlation between the green movement and death cults of the dark and middle ages. Mostly with the constant predictions of apocalypses that never happen. But Ive never really said or thought too much about it because I thought calling people like Feeney death cultists is a little irresponsible and a tad bit on the hyperbole side. But with the recent talk of Genghis Khan being a green warrior, the black plague being a good thing and the general anti-human rhetoric lately its seeming more like a modern death cult by the day. Most death cults hate civilization and humanity in general. The 10-10 video was the first thing that brought the death cult like patterns to mind. Like I said, calling the green movement a modern death cult probably is the very definition of irresponsible and hyperbole, but I just cant help making the connections. All the signs are there though. Disdain for civilization and advancement. Uncaring to contempt of human life. Constant predictions of apocalypses. Death cults have been around since the dawn of civilization and probably even further back. So it shouldnt be much of a surprise that those tendencies still are with us. At the height of the Holy Roman Catholic empire the death cults were mostly Christian sects. These were educated and well learned individuals. They often dreamed up gruesome apocalypses as a sort of demented fan fiction. We live in an age where science dictates what people think and believe. So it shouldnt be much of a surprise that this mentality would use science as a sort of weapon against itself. These people are starting to get scary.

Education: A Vaccine Against Ignorance? Or, There Are Too Many People!
Published by Briggs at 9:32 Currently, one could argue that the most significant form of global pollution is human population growth. So says Mr Jack Trevors, Editor-in-Chief of Water, Air, & Soil Pollution (WASP), an international, interdisciplinary journal on all aspects of pollution and solutions to pollution in the biosphere. This includes chemical, physical and biological processes affecting flora, fauna, water, air and soil in relation to environmental pollution.

WASP insists on rigorous peer review: Articles should not be submitted that are of local interest only and do not advance international knowledge in environmental pollution and solutions to pollution. Articles that simply replicate known knowledge or techniques while researching a local pollution problem will normally be rejected without review. So what are we to make of the peer-reviewed article A Vaccine Against Ignorance? by Trevors and Associate Editor Mr Milton Saier? It begins by echoing dHolbach: One of the greatest challenges facing humanity is ignorance. This keystone of Enlightenment philosophy promises that once man is properly educated he will live in paradise. However, it is with sadness that I report that this discovery, of obvious monumental importance, has the bloody empirical corollary, If a man refuses education he must be extirpated lest he spread the cancer of ignorance. What can Trevors and Saier teach mankind? [T]he capitalistic systems of economy follow the one principal rule: the rule of profit making. All else must bow down to this ruleThe current USA is an example of a failed capitalistic state in which essential long-term goals such as prevention of climate change and limitation of human population growth are subjugated to the short-term profit motive and the principle of economic growth. The word failed is curious until we hear their lamentation that many people in the USA are confused about the unbearable truth of human-caused Global Warming. Confused is comforting because confusion can be repaired by education. And nowhere is there more misunderstanding than about global warming whose theoretical basis was established over 50 years ago! 50! If only we could educate the befuddled, the rise of the oceans would begin to slow, the planet would begin to heal. Alas, the ignorant are likely to prefer a fairy tale to reality; its so much nicer (for a while) to think that no serious problems exist. Such people just continue to live in a fantasy world that will dissolve when reality becomes oppressive, just as does a dream fades [sic] away after one wakes. But by then it will be too late to correct the problems that were propagated by ignorance (this tortuous metaphor appears to argue that the citizenry should remain aslumber1). Only the panacea Education can cause the ignorant to develop a deep feeling of compassion and responsibility towards all, a feeling of dedication to the welfare of humans and other beings on the planet. We must not yield to the greedy interests of profiteers! Unless the impediments that prevent people from gaining the educations they desire are overcome, we will remain intellectual barbarians. Wait: how can the ignorant desire the education they lack? Are they not asleep? Are they not wallowing in their greed and self-centeredness? Never mind: education is what counts, education is all. Education cures insecure urges to spend excessively on military. This isnt some random non sequitur, no sir! See, every dollar a country spends on weapons of destruction is one they could have invested on means to limit their population. The educated know that people are the cause of misery; therefore, limiting people reduces misery. Whats needed is obvious: more education. But coupled with restrictions on people, agencies, and corporations determined to follow the profit motive, and in so doing, undermine the intelligence of

the populace. And you thought Steve Jobs, head of Apple corporation, was benign. Cut out the cancer! With the steel-handed education championed by our authors, ignorance would fade into the background, and discrimination, racism, intolerance, terrorism, crime, and fraud would be countered by the larger more rational segments of the human population. Trevors and Saier are not, they are certainly not, suggesting the resurrection of a utopian wish. Yet something approaching bliss can be had when inferior ideas and thoughts in ignorant human minds are eliminated from the equation and replaced with superior ideas resulting from a sound education. Eliminated! Brothers and sisters, ladies and gentlemen, let us submerge our selfish desires for the betterment of humanity and the planet. Can I get an amen? Update Our caring pair also have published We do not have a spare Earth in the science journal Environmentalist, in which they take great pains to say, repeatedly and with scintillating emphasis, We do not have a spare Earth. More science: The living organisms including humans in our common biosphere follow a simple set of rules. Some organisms live and reproduce, some live and do not reproduce and some die before they reproduce. Because of their glamorous and demanding careers, many statisticians fall into that last category.
1

No, but its a word now.

Thursday 26 May 2011 Putting humanity in a kangaroo court When Nobel laureates staged a mock eco-trial in Stockholm last week, they were really demanding to rule the world.
Ben Pile You may not have noticed, but last week you were a co-defendant in a court case. In Stockholm, the Third Nobel Laureate Symposium on Global Sustainability met at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. The event website proclaimed that hjumanity [sic] will be on trial as the Third Nobel Laureate Symposium brings together almost 20 Nobel Laureates, a number of leading policy makers and some of the worlds most renowned thinkers and experts on global sustainability.

The charge against us, humanity, was that our vast imprint on the planets environment has shifted the Earth into a new geological period labelled the Anthropocene the Age of Man. But this was a showtrial. The guilty verdict had been written before the court had even assembled. The prosecution will therefore maintain that humanity must work towards global stewardship around the planets intrinsic boundaries, a scientifically defined space within which we can continue to develop, claimed Professor Will Steffen, showtrial prosecutor and executive director of the Climate Change Institute at the Australian National University. The website and literature accompanying the symposium made no mention of the defences argument. Indeed, why would a Symposium on Global Sustainability invite a defence that challenged the premises it intended to promote? The trial was merely a stunt, of course, designed to make a stuffy, pompous and self-serving enterprise such as this more appealing to the media and the hoi polloi it sought to prosecute. It was one of a number of sessions at the event, each intended to qualify the sustainability agenda with the expertise of its participants. But this circle-jerk, show-trial symposium revealed far more about its members and the hollowness of the sustainability agenda than it revealed about humanity. A trial implies a question mark over the guilt of the accused. A showtrial on the other hand, is a performance designed to serve some agenda or purpose, to make political capital from the trumpedup crimes of the defendant, whose guilt has already been established. And so it is with the litany of charges served against humanity: we are influencing critical Earth system processes, pushing the planet out of the 10,000-year Holocene environment, causing irreversible and abrupt changes. These are our transgressions. They were recited in the courtroom melodrama, not to encourage scrutiny of ourselves, of society, or even really our relationship with nature, but to elevate the judges and their agenda. After all, without criminals, there can be no judges. There is a strange irony to the spectacle of the worlds best thinkers putting humanity on trial. At the same time as they sit in judgement of humanity, those who seemingly best represent its virtues distance themselves from it. This act reflects a disconnect between the worlds elite the establishment, in other words and the rest of humanity. It is a practical demonstration of the extent to which contempt for humanity has been absorbed into establishment thinking. Environmentalists often find it hard to understand why their arguments and actions are taken as a reflection of deep anti-humanism. But the symposium epitomises the degradation of the concept of humanity. Its not merely the symbolic act of the Great and Good sitting above the rest of us and passing judgement; anti-humanism runs through their discussion. The showtrial diminishes the defendant humanity by making the plaintiff the Earth. There are only two ways this can be made sensible: either the Earth has characteristics that qualify it as a person deserving of legal status, or humanity does not have characteristics that make it exceptional, distinct from nature. Sure enough, across the bottom of the symposiums brochure in large print are the words The world is facing a tangle of entwined challenges. It is time to recognize that we are part of nature. More depth on this central message of the symposium is given in the outline of its themes: A central challenge for the twenty-first century is to respect the dynamic environmental boundaries that define a safe planetary operating space for humanity and to guide the human enterprise onto trajectories that develop within these boundaries. Collective action, flexible institutions and active stewardship of our globally interconnected social-ecological system is required to ensure a prosperous future for humanity. The themes also declare: It is time to fully realize that our societies and economies are integrated parts of the biosphere, and start accounting for and governing natural capital.

The attack on humanity would not leave such a bad taste in the mouth, were it not so nebulous. What does it mean to respect dynamic environmental boundaries, let alone identify them? Sustainability advocates claim ground for their argument in science, but the imperative that we respect environmental boundaries precedes any real understanding of what these boundaries are, or whether they even exist. Dynamic boundaries are in fact goalposts that can shift according to the needs of the sustainability agenda and its advocates, not a fact about the material world. Anything, including a caveman lifestyle, could be deemed unsustainable. But most importantly, what is forgotten by the symposiums concatenation of incoherent and pseudo-scientific ecoconcepts is the dynamism of humanity. Instead of seeing humans as creative, and able to respond to a changing world without their guidance, the laureates presuppose that we exist within a tightly entwined relationship with nature. Our unguided movement within this relationship unsettles the mythological balance that natures providence rests on; nature is dynamic, but we are not. Thus we bring disequilibrium into the world at our own peril, like Adam and Eve thrust out of Eden for bringing sin to paradise. Humanity has brought chaos into creation, and we are now burdened with the consequences. And it is from this idea of a perilous relationship with nature that the members of the symposium hope to create a basis for reorganising society, with themselves as its stewards. The sentence handed to us by our judges is a series of emergency and longer-term measures that humanity must observe if we are to survive. Many of these demands are familiar noises about avoiding dangerous climate change, meeting Millennium Development Goals, and increasing the efficiency of productive activity. But more telling is the demand for the strengthening of Earth system governance, which calls for a range of institutions to be created or given greater power to integrate the climate, biodiversity and development agendas and address the legitimate interests of future generations. Theres also the call to enact a new contract between science and society, which will launch a research initiative on the Earth system and global sustainability, and increase scientific literacy. At face value, the symposium and the sustainability agenda are about saving the planet. However, the desire for a sustainable relationship between society and nature looks much more like nervousness about the establishments relationship with the rest of society. The institutional apparatus and power sought by the Nobel laureates through the sustainability agenda is about a search for authority and legitimacy: to overcome the gap that exists between the establishment and the rest of humanity without actually closing it. We dont have to stretch our imaginations to get a glimpse of what these new institutions and powers the object of the sustainability agendas ambition will look like and what they are really about. The mock trial of humanity allowed the laureates to play out their fantasy in which humanitys guilt is turned into political power. In this intertwined relationship, there is no need of democracy; political power is simply justified on the basis of humanitys guilt and the inevitability of catastrophe. The laureates imagine themselves in a state administrated by Platos philosopher kings. Us mere plebs are deemed incapable of determining things for ourselves. They appoint themselves, in case our base ambitions, desires and needs get the better of us and we send the world into ruin. It is no more meaningful to try humanity for crimes against nature than it is to try nature for crimes against humanity disease, flood, famine and so on. In the Middle Ages, all kinds of animals were summoned to courts to be tried. The Enlightenment saw the formulation of a more sophisticated understanding of nature and humanity: we created our own future, and our own history; the antithesis to the idea that we are mystically entwined with gods, monsters, and other personalities representing nature. Those ideas in which humanity was understood as exceptional and apart from

nature are now being abandoned by the very group of people who ought to be carrying the legacy of the Enlightenment and the humanism that developed within it. The idea of a closely intertwined, inflexible relationship with nature that the Laureates prefer creates a prison in which no expression of humanity can be seen as a worthwhile end in itself. Everything must be judged by the imperatives of sustainability and its institutions. Our predicament can only be redressed by reconnecting human development and global sustainability, moving away from the false dichotomy that places them in opposition. [...] In an interconnected and constrained world, in which we have a symbiotic relationship with the planet, environmental sustainability is a precondition for poverty eradication, economic development, and social justice. Such is the extent of the anti-humanism of the sustainability agenda that meeting the most basic of human needs is not a good unless it has been assessed for its environmental impact. It is not humanity in general, but these sustainability advocates that deserve to be in the dock. Ben Pile blogs at Climate-Resistance. Tuesday 31 May 2011 Tim Black

Beware Malthusians in reasonable clothing

The green critics of population control are just as misanthropic as their prophylacticpromoting opponents. The ambient jazzy, folky music - possibly nicked from a nearby Starbucks - had been turned to mute. The lights were dimmed. And the effect was near instant. The postgraduatedominated audience under-populating the Bloomsbury Theatre in London was finally settling down in glum anticipation of My vision for the future, the first public event of Population Footprints a UCL and Leverhulme Trust conference on human population growth and global carrying capacity. Quite what the audience was expecting, Im not sure. Doom-laden prophesying? Possibly. Encomia to family planning? Probably. Frighteningly self-righteous blather about there being too many people and too few resources? Almost definitely. This last, after all, is the great unmentionable that the green and the not-so-good cant stop mentioning, a neo-Malthusian idea that has seized the withered imaginations of every repressed misanthrope from Forum for the Future founder Jonathon Porritt to the patron saint of wildlife programmes, Sir David Attenborough. As Attenborough himself said in a recent piece for the New Statesman: The fundamental truth that Malthus proclaimed remains the truth: there cannot be more people on this earth than can be fed. So, given this current cultural climate, in which its almost conventional to view the propagation of the species as an act of self-destruction, what the audience was probably not expecting was the opening gambit of Fred Pearce, environment consultant for the New Scientist, author of Peoplequake, and, most important of all, someone who doesnt think population growth is much of

a problem. We are defusing the population bomb, he declared. There was no booing. But there was no applause either. Not that Pearce would mind, of course. He seems to be enjoying making a name for himself as the debunker of overpopulation hype. A few weeks ago, for instance, he took on no less a source of procreation anxiety than the United Nations Population Division (UNPD). The problem for Pearce was that in 2009, the UNPD had estimated that the global population, currently just under seven billion, would reach nine billion by 2050 before levelling off. At the beginning of May, however, it revised its predictions. Now global population was not only going to reach nine billion by 2050, but it was going to keep on rising until it reaches over 10 billion by 2100. Pearce was not convinced that there was much evidence to support such a revision. In fact, as he points out in Nature magazine, current world population and current global fertility rates are actually lower than the UN predicted they would be at this stage two years ago. So why, contrary to actual population trends, does the UN now envisage a further rise in future fertility rates? None of this makes sense, argues Pearce: women are now having half as many babies as their grandmothers and world fertility has fallen from 4.9 children per woman in the early 1960s to its current level of around 2.45. The only way the UN can come up with such groundless population projections is by assuming that many developed countries currently with fertility rates well below the replacement level of 2.1 will suddenly start, contrary to all expectations, to produce more and more children. As Pearce observes, this assumption has simply been imposed on to the modelling system. Hence the revision looks more like a political construct than a scientific analysis. All of which sounds like a rational voice amid the cacophony of overpopulation doom-mongering. This is surely a good thing, right? What could be better than an award-winning science journalist and author calling out the prophets of overcrowding? The problem is that while Pearce is correct regarding the population-hyping models used by the UNPD, he has not come to destroy the Malthusian core of green-tinged thinking; he has come, whether he knows it or not, to save Malthusianism, not damn it. Save it, that is, from its overexcited champions who see the threat of catastrophic population growth as a stick with which to beat people the world over into prophylactic-using submission. As Brendan ONeill has argued before on spiked, what sets Pearce apart from his birth-controlling fellow travellers is that he is savvy enough to know that the Malthusian enthusiasm for population control has a thoroughly horrific history. His eighteenth-century master, the Reverend Thomas Malthus, had nothing but contempt for the proliferating (and increasingly radicalised) lower classes. Malthus thought destitution and starvation were happy correctives to there just being too damn many of Them. The late nineteenth century saw a rise in the popularity of eugenics, a surge that culminated in some of the nastiest proposals and practices of the twentieth century. In every case, these Malthus-referencing, population-fiddling ideas have exemplified mans inhumanity to man. And no wonder. Interpreting social and economic problems, from unemployment to food shortages, in terms of human reproduction means that the solutions must also take a biological, naturalised form - whether thats contraception, sterilisation or extermination. Pearce knows this. He knows that the current vogue for the idea of overpopulation has the potential to be bad PR for environmentalism. As he admitted last week, the notion of global carrying capacity does have a tendency to turn into Third World bashing. Enter United Nations special adviser Jeffrey Sachs, whose recent response to the UNPDs revised population projection for Nigeria captured Pearces fear: It is not healthy, Sachs said, adding: Nigeria should work towards attaining a maximum of three children per family. The reported retort from one Nigerian woman was completely understandable: [The UN] should try to advise the government how to make the

lives of Nigerians better, not telling Nigerians not to have children that is not their business. Or take the comments of two university health lecturers in America who lamented of Africa: even Uganda with one of the highest numbers of AIDS cases in sub-Saharan Africa is projected to almost triple its population by 2050. That AIDS can be seen as a population check, albeit an unsuccessful one, is testament to the willingness of the demography-obsessed to see anything that limits population numbers as a Good Thing. So, seeing human reproduction as the source of social and economic problems, as an increasingly vociferous number of people in the West do, means that population and reproductive habits become the locus of the solution. And as Pearce recognises, this is an approach that historically has had ugly results. But Pearce does not really jettison Malthus. He just wants to excise the bits that would make even the meanest liberal choke on their organic leeks, you know, the bits that are a bit racist, a bit cruel, a bit, well, illiberal. And this is the point that he performs his sleight of hand: he flips his Malthusian emphases, from the number-of-people side of the equation to the other, number-ofresources side. Hence his doom-mongering comeback at last weeks event: we havent even begun to defuse the real threat the consumption bomb. Thats right; its not that there are too many people, its that there are too few resources. The limits that the unabashedly Malthusian ascribe to population are ascribed by the surreptitiously Malthusian to resources. It doesnt seem to matter that the supposed limits to resource-use have been transgressed time and time again by advances in human productivity, from the discovery that coal could be used not just for jewellery but for energy creation, to the so-called green revolution in agriculture during the 1960s and 1970s. For Pearce, as with the environmentalist cohorts he wants to save from open Malthusianism, socio-economic limits appear so natural that the only future he can envisage is one in which we adjust to those limits. Or as he put: Its the worlds consumption patterns that we need to fix, not the worlds reproductive habits. The thing is, we - human beings - are not the problem. In fact, Id confidently wager that were the only species on the planet capable of coming up with solutions. And by solutions, that does not mean sacrificing either a portion of our number to misery and death or demanding that another portion of humanity restricts its material aspirations. For those are not solutions, they are the products of the exhausted consciousness of an elite that cannot envisage the future except in terms of decline and disaster. Tim Black is senior writer at spiked.

Not a Human Tragedy - A Human Triumph

The transformation of the Chaco is an ecological and human tragedy | John Vidal | Environment | guardian.co.uk South America's "green hell" the Chaco...what has happened in that unbearably hot, ecologically fragile, insect-infested thorn-desert, in the past year? The answer is the Chaco which stretches across Argentina and Paraguay is now being ripped up and converted to US-style ranchland by bulldozers even faster than it was before and the few Indians who live there have never felt more threatened.

This year, the immense Al-Khorayef conglomerate announced it was to spend $400m "irrigating and developing" nearly 200,000 hectares to grow food for Saudi Arabia.

But the conservationists have not given up. The small but effective World Land Trust, has, with local partner Guyra Paraguay, tried to hold a line and now owns 2.5m ha, an area roughly the size of East Anglia. Today's transformation of the Chaco is an ecological and human tragedy A human tragedy? Transforming millions of hectares of desert into food producing farms. Upsetting a few nomads, who probably prefer driving air conditioned John Deeres to scratching for bugs to eat in the sand, is a price worth paying to feed millions of hungry mouths. Blog Post Dated: July 10, 2011 9:34 AM

The science editorials of Jack Trevors

10 Jul Jack Trevors is a distinguished scientist at the University of Guelph. Hes had a decorated career in microbiology research, and unlike many scientists, has pursued research into more broader topics such as the question of the origin of life and the genetic code. But, Trevors drew the attention of climate skeptics with one of his editorials titled A vaccine against ignorance? at the journal Water, Air, & Soil Pollution, where he is editor-in-chief. A quick perusal of the editorial co-authored with Milton Saier, would reveal its several unpleasant aspects, centred around a suprisingly fact-free venting of pet political peeves on human population and capitalism. ClimateQuotes dissected it, so did JunkScience. A while later, William Briggs wrote about it in his characteristic fashion. Replying to Briggs invitation to write a rebuttal, Trevors wrote back, dismissing him thus: simply publish your papers in peer reviewed journals and then you can interact with the science community.

Trevors editorials
At the time the strangely hypersensitive and virulent rhetoric in Trevors intrigued me. Digging back into Trevors previous editorials, I stumbled into a veritable cornucopia of Trevors opinions all arrayed against the scource of humans and the planet. The underlying theme was constant in all these editorials human and the growth of their numbers as the source of all planetary ills. Full excerpts from the comments I submitted to Briggs follow (highlights mine): Human males are the cause of virtually all of our major problems on the Earth. Most past and present dictators, elected political officials, military officials and terrorists have been or are males who inflict immense human suffering by their actions. Rarely have females been responsible for comparable degrees of destruction. In fact, men have consistently cast tremendous suffering not only upon themselves, but also on women and children. Trevors J, Saier M. Testosterone: The Cause of Our Worlds Problems? Water, Air, & Soil Pollution. 2009;200(1):1-2.

The total planetary abuse is the extraction of hydrocarbons from the Earth and depositing the gasses and particulates in the atmosphere, oceans, soils, and bodies of animals. This form of abuse is the total pollution of our biosphere. To complicate the situation, add about 6.6 billion humans to the planet with an increase of 75 million humans annually. This is also abuse of our common shared biosphere. Trevors J. Total Abuse of the Earth: Human Overpopulation and Climate Change. Water, Air, & Soil Pollution. 2010;205(0):113-4. We must succeed in decreasing the human population if we are to slow the assault on the Earths biosphere. Only if we do so, will we have sufficient time, energy, and capability to meet the challenges of global climate change, human and animal pandemics, and conflicts at international, national, communal, and personal levels. Managing humans requires short-term action and long-term education, particularly on how to manage our reproductive activities. This would be the first and most important step toward becoming responsible world citizens. Progress toward resource consumption limitation will be thwarted if the numbers of humans on Earth continue to increase. Education can provide a dual knowledgevalue system that allows people to think globallylong-terminstead of only considering the short-term individual desires for immediate gratification. Everyone must recognize the consequences of unwanted pregnancy and birth. Humans are on a direct and fast collision course with global environmental disaster, and we are doing little to avoid the consequences. We must provide the means for fertility restriction so women can choose their family sizes and never be forced into unwanted pregnancy and motherhood. Universal womens rights and human rights must be guaranteed. Remember, women are the victims of assaults, incest, and male domination. In every country where free birth control methods become available, birth rates drop to near replacement levels. This means that high fertility rates are not wanted by the citizens of underdeveloped countries; high fertility is forced upon women everywhere when free contraception and safe abortion services are not available. Trevors J, Saier M. Manage Humans, not the Environment. Water, Air, & Soil Pollution. 2010;205(0):93-5. Some people believe that more credit must be made available to fuel consumption of renewable and nonrenewable resources in order to stimulate economic growth. Yet, the human population is now marching towards seven billion people, and we are already living painfully unsustainably. The planet is infected with too many humans. It would take an annual 3040 billion dollars, a trifling really, to provide universal birth control for the entire human population. This would be by far our best investment, but the USA, for one, or its current governmental officials, does not seem

willing to even provide a tiny fraction of this meager sum. It would rather devote trillions for war and destruction, trillions for home security, and trillions for an untested rescue plan that allows billions to be pocketed by its planners. Humanitarian organizations, the wealthy nations of the world, and everyone everywhere need to contribute to a well thought out, comprehensive, environmental rescue plan. We all need to contribute until it hurts, because the alternative is loss of our biosphere and species extinction with Homo sapiens being one of the casualties. Before humans disappear from the face of the Earth, human civilization will go by the wayside, resulting in incessant warfare, suffering, and destruction. We desperately need proper education, especially in the areas of human fertility, birth control, and global pollution. Trevors J, Saier M. Where Is the Global Environmental Bailout? Water, Air, & Soil Pollution. 2009;198(1):1-3. Democracy is not an idea on paper or in peoples minds. Democracy must be enacted internationally so humans can protect and preserve our common, shared, singular biosphere, mostly by controlling human population growth, reducing resource depletion, conservation, ending conflicts, cooperation, research, and education. A priority national and international challenge will be to engineer actual stable democratic states, in sufficient time to deal with human population growth and the immense amount of pollution contributing to global climate change. Engineering the correct democracies has been an immense challenge for all countries and some have totally failed to make any progress. Trevors J. Global Pollution, Climate Change, and Democracies. Water, Air, & Soil Pollution. 2010;205(0):125-6.

Briggs et al respond
With Trevors basic theme so publicized, Briggs with his co-authors Willie Soon, David Legates and Robert Carter responded to Trevors challenge: publish in the peer-reviewed literature. It is titled: A vaccine against arrogance. Briggs et als response takes up one of the two major lines evident in the Trevors editorials: how has a pollution science journale editorial column become a soap box for politicized venting by its custodian? They write: Scientists acting in the name of science must remain mute on morality. They must remain agnostic, and should not preach. It is, thus, obvious that professional journals have no business publishing poorly written and naively argued political tracts which are only loosely associated with their stated purpose. Further, the forums available for scientists who feel utopian urges and the need to agitate politically are as multitudinous as they are for any citizen. Trevors and Saier have followed up with their rebuttal. Contained in it, is the weakest of possible replies to qualify for a rebuttal to Briggs et als central objection:

Providing a perspective in a science journal is not preaching or arrogant. It is a perspective. People reading the perspective can also choose to not read it or simply ignore it afterwards. They can also choose to disagree with some or all of the perspective. Professional journals can choice[sic] to publish what they want. If some people disagree, then they should not read the journals and choose to read and publish elsewhere. It is indeed the right of every citizen to question political decisions and activities in democratic countries. This is not a form of agitation but central to evolving modern democratic states. If citizens of a country disagree with this, they have the option of leaving their evolving democracy and becoming a citizen of any non-democratic country who will grant them citizenship. In other words, Trevors and Saier say: Dont read us if you dont like what we have to say. We view publishing of our views at a venue of which one of us is editor-in-chief, as a democratic right, and if you dont like it, you can emigrate to any non-democratic country. It is clear that Trevors has failed to uphold his original offer: inviting participation in the peerreviewed literature, Trevors fails to engage and explain why a science journal should perform as a platform for political views, however well-founded they may be (as he claims). Instead, defensively, he deems to shoo away those who question him. Indeed, Briggs et al can be assured: publication of political tracts in science journals is not a democratic function. There are other venues for such expression: newspapers, the electronic media, blogs, magazines and published books in the popular press. Indeed, Trevors actions as editor reflect the capturing of an otherwise open scientific forum, a position offered to him no doubt for his scientific merit for the promulgation of his personal opinions. It is patently anti-democratic. As noted previously it is Trevors who is in error if he thinks his opinion pieces emanating from his safely ensconced position as editor constitutes interaction with the scientific community. In reality, the bizzare opinions he holds wouldnt survive two minutes outside his ivory tower, in the sunlight of the wide world. Trevors and Saier conclude their rebuttal by singing further paeans to the virtue of education. But as clearly evident from the above quoted passages, Trevors views education, as nothing more than an euphemism for inhibition of reproductive and procreative impulses. Posted by Shub Niggurath on July 10, 2011

Fanaticism 101
by Donna Laframboise Friday was Canada Day where I live and Monday is the 4th of July in America. On this long weekend in which so many of us are counting our blessings its important to have clarity about one thing: Debate is necessary. Silencing people is wrong. Attempting to silence those with whom you disagree by calling them murderers of your grandchildren is reprehensible. It convinces no one. It says you are a close-minded fanatic. Theres a gentleman out there by the name of Greg Laden. Surrealistically he blogs at a web domain called ScienceBlogs.com. He holds a PhD from Harvard, yet despite all that education he still doesnt understand that free speech isnt a trinket to be tossed aside whenever someone feels strongly about a topic.

A few days ago he wrote: When you look upon a global warming denialist, you are not seeing a person who is deluded, wrong, misinformed, or misguided. You are seeing a person who is intent on killing your grandchildren. You may want to treat them politely, you may want to be a dick to them. Do whatever works. But dont let them think for a second that you do not know what the consequences of their actions are. Dont let them get away with it. [bold added] Ive said it before and Ill say it again: If, in the name of fighting global warming, we leave our grandchildren a world in which Mother Nature is revered but free speech, freedom to live where they wish, and to have as many children as they choose have all disappeared they wont thank us. Once we start down this path REALLY BAD THINGS WILL HAPPEN. There is nothing that fanatics cant justify as being in the interests of saving the planet. Nothing. Wednesday 12 October 2011

Beware Malthusians posing as progressives

Dont be fooled by the fashionable new crowd of Malthus-bashing greens: theyre as misanthropic as old-style population scaremongers. Brendan ONeill As we approach the Day of Seven Billion, when the seven billionth human being will be born, a debate is raging. On one side, population scaremongers are fretting about the arrival of Child No.7,000,000,000, claiming that he or she will add to a growing human swarm that is heaping pressure on the environment. On the other side, liberal observers slam these Malthusians, claiming that their lament about overpopulation is a mask for misanthropy. As one headline put it: Welcome baby seven billion weve room for you on Earth. Well, that is what it looks like through a casual glance that a fiery debate is taking place between followers of the Reverend Thomas Malthus on one side and hip questioners of the Malthusian thesis on the other. But this is deceptive. Dig a little deeper, and youll see that whats really unfolding in the countdown to the Day of Seven Billion is a clash of alternative Malthusianisms, an unseemly spat between two sides that are as miserabilist as each other and which both cleave to the notion that humanitys problems are demographic in nature rather than social. Of course, with yawn-inducing predictability, the old guard of the population scaremongering lobby is out in force in the run-up to 31 October, the day when the UN predicts that humanity will number seven billion. Those rather fusty adherents to the Malthusian outlook as first posited by Thomas Malthus in his Essay on the Principle of Population (1798) may have adopted PC-sounding lingo in recent years, using phrases like climate change in place of apocalypse, but theyre still motored by a misanthropic view of speedily breeding human beings as the authors of societys downfall. Population Matters (PM), formerly the Optimum Population Trust, is marking 31 October by sticking ads all over the London Underground in an environment that itself highlights the problem of overpopulation: the overcrowded transport system.

PMs belief that overcrowding on the Tube is a result of overpopulation gives a brilliant insight into the narrow-minded, ahistoric thinking of old-world Malthusians. They seem incapable of understanding that squeezed conditions on rush-hour trains are actually down to a failure of infrastructure, a failure to expand and innovate, rather a result of Londoners having too many babies or immigrants coming over here and stealing all our seats. And so it is above ground, too, where global problems like poverty and hunger are a product, not of too many black babies demanding grub we dont have, but of a social failure to develop all human societies and liberate all human beings from need. The problem with Malthusian thinking is that it misunderstands social problems as demographic ones. It reinterprets social limits as natural limits, repackaging problems of social development as problems of natures shrinking bounty. Malthus fans make the dunderheaded error of imagining that human population is a scary variable, always going up, while everything else, including the amount of natural resources and the level of human ingenuity, remains constant. This profoundly anti-social outlook means they constantly fret about there being too many mouths to feed, when even just a cursory glance at our history will show that we have continually come up with ingenious ways to get more and more from nature in order to feed and clothe more and more people. But the new Malthusian-bashers arent much better. In fact, if anything theyre worse, since they pose as progressives who want to protect Africans and Asians from the hectoring of white population scaremongers yet at the same time they promote the central tenets of the Malthusian outlook. Their rallying cry is effectively, Ignore the right-wing Malthus-loving lobby the problem today is not overpopulation over there but overconsumption over here. How blissful is their ignorance they seem oblivious to the fact that their fashionable fretting about fat whiteys hoovering up scarce resources is every bit as Malthusian as that guy in tweed who worries about Nigerians popping out too many ankle-biters. So at the Guardian, Lynsey Hanley lays into old-style Malthusians, criticising their moral crusade against the poor and the foreign. Yet she then argues that the real crisis facing the world today is overconsumption, calling on Western governments to implore people to reduce their consumption, especially of petrol, meat, imported fruit and other adoptive necessities. (Yeah, who needs meat?) Revealing that she isnt on principle opposed to population control, she says that for there to be any significant impact on the environment, [population] decline would have to take place in countries that already consume a far more than sustainable share of the worlds resources. This echoes other post-Malthus Malthusians, who likewise imagine that bigging up the real problem of overconsumption distinguishes them from those saddos obsessed with human numbers in the Third World. So in his book Peoplequake, Fred Pearce is scathing about Malthus and his modern-day disciples, because rising consumption is now a much bigger cause of our growing impact on the planet [than population]. Yet this panic about humanitys overuse of allegedly scarce resources is entirely in tune with the Malthusian mindset. Trendy thinkers keen to disassociate themselves from the chequered history of Malthusianism may have jettisoned explicit talk about too many babies, but their concern about too few resources is just a different way of saying the same thing: that natures bounty is under threat and thus we must be careful how we approach it. Right from its origins in the 1790s through to its rebirth as a green idea in the 1970s, Malthusianism has been fuelled by this very notion of overconsumption. The original Malthusian idea of too many people was based on a concern that these people would deplete resources, which were apparently naturally limited, thus giving rise to scarcity and destitution. Fred Pearce might say that overconsumption has led to a situation where we have overshot the planets carrying capacity, where Malthus was far less PC and claimed that poor people having too many babies threatened to unleash famine, but behind their very divergent

lingo the idea promoted by these two thinkers is the same: that mankinds lifestyles and aspirations should be straitjacketed by so-called natural limits. The Malthus-haters demanding that we focus on consumption rather than population are rehabilitating the underlying theme of Malthusianism and of the broader conservative, traditionalist, environmentalist outlook of the past 200 years: the notion that the problems facing mankind are natural rather than social. And when you take that view, when you accept the fundamental premise of Malthusianism, your solution will always be to shrink human horizons, whether by hectoring African women to stop having babies or mocking American men for eating too much meat, rather than to expand human society. It is this across-the-board naturalisation of social problems, this repackaging of todays dearth of social imagination as a crisis of natural limits, which must be shot down as we give three cheers for the seven billionth human being. And that is what spiked intends to do. Brendan ONeill is editor of spiked. Visit his personal website here. reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/11159/ Tuesday 18 October 2011

THE GREEN SUPERSTATE - what the global warmers really want

Who poses the greater threat to freedom? Colonel Gadaffi? The Taliban? Or lets look closer to home, at a sinister group with far, far greater influence on the future of Western civilization. The Green zealots, with their bicycles and wispy dresses and organic fruit juice, should have us quaking in our boots. With terrifying single-mindedness, the Green movement is waging war against freedom, for more State control. And theyve been at it from the start. In his Population Bomb (written in the 60s) Paul Ehrich says, The policeman against environmental deterioration must be the powerful Department of Population and the Environment. Sounds scary, but when the future of the planet hangs in the balance, theres no room for half measures. E. F. Schummacher, in his classic green text Small is Beautiful, advocates, in place of capitalist free markets, a national plan imposed by some central agency. And he reminds us, in sinister tones, Planning (as I suggest the term should be used) is inseparable from power. National planning by a central agency would, he says, give us a more democratic and dignified s ystem of industrial administration. And, with topsy-turvy logic, he equates State control with freedom, private ownership of the means of production is severely limited in its freedom of choice of objectives, because it is compelled to be profit-seeking, and tends to take a narrow and selfish view of things. Public ownership gives complete freedom in the choice of objectives and can therefore be used for any purpose that may be chosen. How free they must all have felt in the old Soviet Union! Three years later, in 1976, Stephen Schneider writes the first climate scare book, The Genesis Strategy. He isnt sure whether the world is going to get colder or warmer, but either way, the problem is free market capitalism, and the solution is more State control. Schneider even floats the idea of rewriting the American constitution, recalling Paul Ehrlichs suggestion of creating a

Planning Branch. As well as the Planning Branch, Schneider suggests another new branch of government, called (like something out of George Orwell) the Truth and Consequences Branch. The Truth and Consequences Branch, he says, should work with a series of other planning bodies, known as World Security Institutes. These would include an alarming Institute of Imminent Disasters, to assess the probable costs of avoiding any and all perceived disasters impending, and a parsimonious Institute of Resource Availability to provide the first institute with independent resource data, an Institute of Alternative Technologies to which the reports from the Institute of Disasters would be sent, for further study. And then, just in case, an Institute for Policy Options which would assess the probable costs, benefits, and uncertainties of various options. The research and development budgets of these new planning bodies, says Schneider, should be openended. Hmm. Lots of jobs and power for scientists like Schneider and his chums in all those institutes. Like Schneider, Crispin Tickell, in his famous early alarmist book Climate Change and World Affairs, isnt sure whether the world will warm up or cool down, but the problem, again, is industrial capitalism and the solution is a powerful international custodian of the worlds climate. And so it continues today. Michael Perelman in his book The Perverse Economy The impacts of Markets on People and the Environment, insists that markets promote behaviour that is environmentally destructive. He reminds us of the joys of World War 2, when In place of markets, they turned to national planning. Because, when survival was at state governments quickly abandoned markets. He says, Wartime planning represents an alternative organizational principle that can address the question of sustainability. In a recent popular green book called Do Good Lives Have to Cost The Earth, a host of green authors stick the boot into free markets and call for more State powers. Tom Hodgkinson rails against the sick and bloated private sector, Caroline Lucas attacks privatization and deregulation, Andrew Sims and Joe Smith tell us, This is a call for the politicians to get their hands on the big levers again. In his book Heat, the radical green George Monbiot says bluntly, It is a campaign not for more freedom, but for less. But hold on a minute. How does the environment in the despised free capitalist West (air quality, water quality, etc) compare with that of the heavily planned, State-controlled Soviet Union, or Cuba or Communist China? To take just one example, the economist Julian Simon quotes a Soviet official who said that 50 million people in 192 cities [in the Soviet Union] are exposed to air pollutants that exceed national standards tenfold. The term the Russian official used was catastrophic pollution. In Magnitogorsk, a coroner complained in 1991, Every day there is some new disaster a worker in his thirties dead from collapsed lungs, a little girl dead from asthma or a weakened heart. Shockingly, the coroner said that over 90 percent of the children born here suffer from some pollution-related illness. Why are the Greens so rabidly keen on more State control? No doubt they would argue that all their green concerns lead naturally to demands for more regulations and public spending and government restrictions. Or is the other way round? Is there a class of bureaucratically-minded folk who favour more State control, for whom green concerns provide what they regard as a justification? In other words, are the Greens looking after the dolphins, or are the dolphins looking after the Greens? There is, I believe, a solid, self-interested, class basis for environmentalism. Green is the natural world view of what sociologists call the New Class. Who are they? Lets ask Irving Kristol. In

his Two Cheers for Capitalism he tells us, This new class is not easily defined but may be vaguely described. It consists of a goodly proportion of those college-educated people whose skills and vocations proliferate in a post-industrial society (to use Daniel Bells convenient term). We are talking about scientists, teachers and educational administrators, journalists and others in the communication industries, psychologists, social workers, those lawyers and doctors who make their career in the expanding public sector, city planners, the staffs of larger foundations, the upper levels of government bureaucracy and so on it is a disproportionately powerful class; it is also an ambitious class and frustrated class. Daniel Bell, to whom Kristol refers, calls the same class by a different name the scientificadministrative complex. At the start of Oliver Stones movie JFK, Stone uses a clip of President Eisenhowers famous farewell speech, in which Eisenhower warned of the growing power of the Military-Industrial complex. But if you look closely, youll see a glitch in the middle of the clip. It is whats called in the trade a jump-cut. Oliver (being left wing) decided to edit President Eisenhowers original sentence, to remove an equally dire warning about the growing influence of the scientificadministrative complex. In The Coming of Post Industrial Society, written in 1973, Daniel Bell argues, that the influence of the military-industrial complex has been exaggerated, compared to the scientific-administrative complex, which represents an intermingling of government, science and the university, unprecedented in American history. He says, The growth of [public] research and development funds, particularly after 1956 has multiplied the claimants of funds for science. Universities have become active political entities in the search for money. Scientists and engineers have started hundreds of profit and non-profit companies to do research and evaluation. The number of scientific and technical associations with headquarters in Washington to represent their constituents has multiplied enormously. This is the broad base of the bureaucratisation of science. He argues that the huge numbers of persons involved, the enormous amounts of money needed for support, and its centrality to the postindustrial society leads both to the bureaucratisation of science, and also to the rise of a new, enormously powerful political force. J. K. Galbraith (approvingly) notes this too in one of his most important books, The New Industrial State, the educational and scientific estate is no longer small; on the contrary, as we have seen, it is very large. It is no longer dependent on private income and wealth for its support; most of its sustenance is provided by the state. Galbraith says, the educational and scientific estate is becoming a decisive instrument of political power. And he reminds us that this New Class, owes its modern expansion and eminence to the requirements of the planning system. This is the planning class - the class that will always call for State intervention something must be done! It will always call for another committee or institute or ministry to be set up, for more research into this or that problem. The blind market can never be left to its own devices. It needs direction, and regulation and restraint. If there is unemployment the answer will always be more government-funded training schemes (run by them) to bridge the skills gap. If the price of rented accommodation rises, the answer will be more regulation (by them) of the housing market. They demand more public spending, planning and regulation as naturally as a stream flows down a mountain. Public sector technocrats are a self-proclaimed solution in need of a problem. And of course, there is none greater than saving the planet from the dire effects of free markets.

As Trotsky correctly (for once) observed, a bureaucracy inevitably tends to develop and articulate its own vested interests. To the planners, freedom itself is a problem. Just as nature abhors a vacuum, every unregulated activity taunts them. If there is no problem to justify an extension of their activities, a problem must be found. And if no problem can be found, then there must be the threat of a problem they call it the precautionary principle. This is what the Climate Crisis is. It matters not one jot if its getting cooler or warmer. There must be a problem, the problem must be industrial capitalism (ie, freedom), and the solution must be more State control. Irving Kristols warning about the progressive left applies equally well to todays trendy global warmers, Modern, liberal secular society is based on the revolutionary premise that there is no superior, authoritative information available about the good life or the true nature of human happiness, that this information is implicit only in individual preferences, and that therefore the individual has to be free to develop and express these preferences. What we are witnessing in Western society today are the beginnings of a counterrevolution, full of bad faith and paltry sophistry, because it is compelled to define itself as some kind of progressive extension of modernity instead of, what it so clearly is, a reactionary revulsion against modernity. And a final sobering thought from the economist Deidre McCloskey, All the experiments of the twentieth century were arranged by governments against bourgeois markets. All of them were disasters. In short, the neoaristocratic, cryptopeasant, proclerisy, antibourgeois theories of the nineteenth century, applied during the twentieth century for taxing, fixing, resisting, modifying, prohibiting, collectivising, regulating, unionising, ameliorating, expropriating modern capitalism, failed of their purpose, killed many millions, and nearly killed us all.

It's very reminiscent of the

Submitted by brc (not verified) on Tue, 10/18/2011 - 23:38. It's very reminiscent of the post-great depression era, when the previously laughed-at theories of the socialists (they still called themselves that, back then) started to gain traction. Planned economies were the way forwards, people were told. Adolph Hitler assumed power in Germany and started to centrally organise and plan the economy, and to assert that the state was more important than the individual. This started to pay early dividends, as a moribund economy started to work again. The problems only began to appear when, in order to correctly control the economy, more and more power was required by the government. In those times, again, the call was for 'wartime' planning, as the socialists loved the idea of the objectives of the state (winning the war) oveerrode the objectives of any of the individual citizens (such as raising a family or growing crops rather than shooting at the enemy). The planning went top-down and controlled everything from how much food you ate, where you worked, when you could turn your lights on. In a wartime scenario, such sacrifices are possible. But the average individual is usually pretty unhappy about it, but weathers the storm in the knowledge that the war would have to end someday. There was a big push for wartime planning to go on after the war, which is why Churchill got turfed pretty much as soon as it was over. The socialists had been telling everyone that this was the way to go. Meanwhile, over in Germany, the socialists were sentenced and executed or jailed, and the citizens overwhelmingly adopted freedom of choice, freedom of vocation, freedom of trade. The postwar comparison of the UK and German economies is one of chalk and cheese. Martin - it's time for a capable author to re-present these arguments in an accessible form, whether book, film, or both. Just present to the people the contradictions. Present to people that more state control must inevitably mean less individual freedom. Present to people the misery of planned

economies. We are several generations on from those that fought the good fight against socialism, and the young today absorb state control as the solution to the perceived problems of the world. Nobody is waking them up from their stupor. Someone needs to.

Green charities: way more evil and dangerous than Exxon or the Koch Brothers
By James Delingpole Politics Last updated: November 10th, 2011

Your glorious green future! Sorry, I find Europe so paralysingly depressing I can't possibly blog about it. Instead, here's a piece of investigative journalism to gladden the heart from Norman Rogers a physicist and senior advisor at the Heartland Institute. It describes how he cunningly infiltrated his way into the belly of the Green Beast aka the America's oldest environmental organisation, the Sierra Club using the brilliantly clever device of paying for membership. Like Greenpeace, like the WWF, the Sierra Club would love you to imagine that it is a plucky little David battling the Goliaths of Big Carbon, Big Industry, Big Pollution, Big Corporate Greed, Big Koch, and so on. In fact again like Greenpeace, like the WWF it is enormously well-funded with an $84 million annual budget and 1.4 million members. This would be nice if it didn't use all that money and influence promoting such terrible causes. As Rogers notes in American Thinker: The Sierra Club idolizes nature and demonizes man. It glorifies economic parasitism and practices junk science. The article's fascinating and well worth reading in full, especially for the bit where the Sierra Club's green panelists start squirming over the issue of all the birds that are killed by wind farms. The Sierra Club, of course, is a huge advocate of wind farms.

But the bit that interested me most was Rogers's description of the "linear no threshold hypothesis." It sounds to me rather similar to the "Precautionary Principle" another of those flimsy, superficially plausible excuses trotted out by thegreen movement to justify banning pretty much anything that smacks of capitalism, commonsense or scientific progress. The Sierra Club campaign against coal is motivated by a desire to reduce CO2 emissions to prevent global warming. But since global warming skepticism and global warming fatigue are widespread, the club has opted for a junk science approach to reach its goals. The club tells people that their babies will die, or at least get asthma, if coal plants continue to operate. Although the cause of asthma is not known, it is suspected that it is related to the high levels of cleanliness in advanced countries that denies children and their immune systems exposure to the dirt and filth found in primitive places. This is known as the hygiene hypothesis. The incidence of asthma is about 50 times higher in developed countries compared to rural Africa. For all the Sierra Club knows, coal plants may prevent asthma. Given the hygiene hypothesis, that seems plausible. With junk science, it is easy to scare people. There are many things that are bad for us that are present at low levels in the environment for example, mercury, lead, radiation, or tobacco smoke. The junk science approach to trace toxins is to claim that if a high level of the bad thing would cause X people to get sick, then a level 10,000 times smaller must cause 1/10,000 as many people to get sick. Given 300 million people in the country, this math can give you thousands of people getting sick from low levels of mercury, lead, radiation, or secondhand tobacco smoke. This approach is known as the linear no threshold hypothesis. The Sierra Club and its ally, the Environmental Protection Agency, lean on the small emissions of mercury from burning coal to work up a calculation of deaths from coal. They minimize the fact that much of the mercury falling on the U.S. comes from China, volcanoes, or even from burning dead bodies with mercury-based fillings in their teeth. Mercury pollution becomes an excuse to get rid of coal. Arguing the science behind such claims often degenerates into a paper chase about statistics and what studies are good or bad. From the bureaucratic point of view, the linear no threshold hypothesis is wonderful because it means that problems are never solved and there is always a need for more bureaucratic activity. I think that of all the things I discovered while researching my book Watermelons, this was the one that shocked me most: the outrageous power wielded by democratically unaccountable environmental NGOs, with the budgets of big corporations and the political philosophy of Marxists. As Donna Laframboise describes in her brilliant book The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken For The World's Top Climate Expert they've heavily infiltrated the IPCC. And as this terrifying video featuring Friends of the Earth green activist turned Labour peer Bryony Worthington shows, they've also had a grotesquely disproportionate influence on British government policy. Meanwhile we learn from FOIAs by Chris Horner that NASA's chief activistscientist James Hansen was paid (on top of his federal salary) $250 an hour by a Canadian law firm to testify in a campaign against an Alberta oil sand company. Worth thinking about, next time you hear a green charity bleating about the evils of all those climate deniers out there lavishly funded by Big Oil. God, I so picked the wrong side to be on: if I'd chosen to join the junk science, eco-fascist climate scam, I wouldn't be so worried about what's happening to the global economy. A) because I'd be so rich it wouldn't matter. And B) because I'd probably be quite pleased it was going down the toilet. After all isn't deindustrialisation, the preservation of "scarce resources" and a return to the bracing, back-breaking misery of the Agrarian

age what the Watermelons of Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, the WWF, NASA and Friends of the Earth been campaigning for all along? November 8, 2011

Sierra Club at the Metropolitan Club

By Norman Rogers

My dirty secret is that I'm a member of the Sierra Club. I joined at the $15 rate for retired senior citizens and received a bonus shoulder bag. The Sierra Club idolizes nature and demonizes man. It glorifies economic parasitism and practices junk science. I joined because I am investigating the environmentalist movement, and I wanted to get their e-mails. The Sierra Club has an $84-million budget and 1.4 million members. Probably most of the members are more interested in singles hikes than in environmental extremism. I

attended a presentation featuring Michael Brune, the club's recently appointed executive director. The presentation was held at the exclusive Metropolitan Club on floors 66 and 67 of the Willis Tower in Chicago. The Willis Tower is the tallest building in the United States (110 stories) and was formerly known as the Sears Tower. Michael Bloomberg is mayor of New York and a billionaire 18 times over. Bloomberg Philanthropies co-sponsored the presentation. That may explain why the drinks were free. Bloomberg recently gave the Sierra Club $50 million to support their beyond coal campaign. The beyond coal campaign aims to shut down electric generating plants that burn coal and that provide about 50% of the electricity in the U.S. The beyond coal campaign should be called the beyond electricity campaign because the Sierra Club is against all practical sources of electricity, favoring instead windmills and solar electricity. It seems a bit odd that Michael Bloomberg, a Wall Street insider and an advocate of large-scale development, would be giving money to the Sierra Club. The Sierra Club is a relentless opponent of practically everything, including large-scale development. But Bloomberg is perpetually toying with the idea of running for president, and the $50

million may be political protection money as well as an attempt to buy the 1.4 million votes of the Sierra Club members. The Sierra Club campaign against coal is motivated by a desire to reduce CO 2 emissions to prevent global warming. But since global warming skepticism and global warming fatigue are widespread, the club has opted for a junk science approach to reach its goals. The club tells people that their babies will die, or at least get asthma, if coal plants continue to operate. Although the cause of asthma is not known, it is suspected that it is related to the high levels of cleanliness in advanced countries that denies children and their immune systems exposure to the dirt and filth found in primitive places. This is known as the hygiene hypothesis. The incidence of asthma is about 50 times higher in developed countries compared to rural Africa. For all the Sierra Club knows, coal plants may prevent asthma. Given the hygiene hypothesis, that seems plausible. With junk science, it is easy to scare people. There are many things that are bad for us that are present at low levels in the environment -- for example, mercury, lead, radiation, or tobacco smoke. The junk science approach to trace toxins is to claim that if a high level of the bad thing would cause X people to get sick, then a level 10,000 times smaller must cause 1/10,000 as many people to get sick. Given 300 million people in the country, this math can give you thousands of people getting sick from low levels of mercury, lead, radiation, or secondhand tobacco smoke. This approach is known as the linear no threshold hypothesis. The Sierra Club and its ally, the Environmental Protection Agency, lean on the small emissions of mercury from burning coal to work up a calculation of deaths from coal. They minimize the fact that much of the mercury falling on the U.S. comes from China, volcanoes, or even from burning dead bodies with mercury-based fillings in their teeth. Mercury pollution becomes an excuse to get rid of coal. Arguing the science behind such claims often degenerates into a paper chase about statistics and what studies are good or bad. From the bureaucratic point of view, the linear no threshold hypothesis is wonderful because it means that problems are never solved and there is always a need for more bureaucratic activity. The panelists at the presentation included Karen Weigert, a Democrat political operative and currently chief sustainability officer of the city of Chicago; Jason Zielke from the Clean Energy Trust; and the Sierra Club executive director, Michael Brune. If you look at their biographies, these panelists are examples of people who have well-paid careers promoting global warming, green energy, and environmental regulation. The basic source of the money for such activity is government programs and, to a lesser extent contributions to non-profit organizations such as the Sierra Club. The green economic sector -- for example, windmills, solar energy, and electric cars -- is entirely dependent on government subsidies and mandates. Green economic interests are a potent political force for the continuation of green subsidies. Junk science and scare stories are a basic tool for the pursuit of green political goals. Without the vast government subsidies and mandates, the green sector would shrink to almost nothing, and people like the panelists would have to get jobs in the productive sector of the economy.

The program of the Sierra Club is well-described in executive director Michael Brune's book: Coming Clean: Breaking America's Addiction to Oil and Coal. The book is filled with speculative and factually wrong statements. His theme is that we can replace fossil fuels with windmills and solar energy at reasonable cost and at the same time create an economic boom. This is pure fantasy because green power (including associated expenses for backup power and transmission lines) often costs 5 to 10 times more than coal or nuclear power. Further, the reduction in CO2 emissions from adopting green power would be of little consequence because China, where coal consumption is increasing at a breakneck pace, is the leading emitter of CO2. After the presentation, I asked Brune what he thought should be done about the China CO2 issue. His principal suggestion was that we should demonstrate that green energy works here, and then the Chinese will copy our example. This laid-back approach is hardly consistent with the depiction of global warming as an urgent problem. One of the most vexing problems for the Sierra Club is that windmills kill birds. The birds have trouble getting out of the way of the blades, which may be traveling at 200 miles an hour. The effect on the bird population is probably minor, but the publicity about birds killed by oil spills has raised the profile of things that kill birds. The bird kill problem was raised several times at the Metropolitan Club. It was quite amusing to watch the panelists squirm under the verbal assaults of the bird-lovers.

Green energy is a parasitic sector of the economy. It exists through political influence and connections. There are green jobs -- for example, the jobs of the panelists. The burden of supporting green jobs falls on the rest of the economy because green energy requires large subsidies. If the green energy promoters really believed their own story, they would far more concerned about CO2 emissions from China and far more willing to utilize CO2-free nuclear power. It's more convenient to ignore the China problem because that is an intractable problem. It's more convenient to ignore the benefits of

nuclear power than to admit that environmentalists have been wrong about nuclear power for 50 years. Panelist Karen Weigert was a producer for the global warming propaganda film Carbon Nation. See this film if you enjoy being patronized by people who don't know what they are talking about. The film suggests, unscientifically, that sea level will rise by 20 feet and create millions of climate refugees. We are urged to support green industry lest China develop a larger parasitic sector than we have. Countering the green energy movement will not be easy. Not long ago, I attended a reception for a Republican freshman congressman who is anxious to get re-elected. After I gave him a lengthy speech as to why wind energy is a waste of money, I found out that the gentleman silently standing next to us was a professional lobbyist from the wind energy association, and that gentleman was well-acquainted with the congressman.
Norman Rogers is a physicist and a senior policy advisor at the Heartland Institute. He maintains a website, www.climateviews.com.

Feck off Frack Off.

Nov 4th, 2011 by Lynne. Bugger it! The alarmist bullshit being flung around by the greenies and the braindead media over the estimated 200 trillion cubic feet of gas locked inside the Bowland Shale deposit has dragged me out of blogging oblivion. I have been paying attention to the shale gas drilling causes earthquakes story. You see, I live a handful of miles distance from Cuadrillas ground zero test rig near Singleton, Lancashire, so I have a dog in this fight. Ill begin with a recent Grauniad story. It seems that some of Singletons residents have seen a film called Gasland, a twisted, fact-lite piece of brazen propaganda that does for shale gas what An Inconvenient Truth is doing for Carbon Dioxide. While villagers are sympathetic to the aims of finding new sources of energy for the UK, and hopeful it might create jobs, many have seen the US film Gasland, which shows allegedly contaminated tap water and the devastation wreaked on swaths of farmland across the US as a result of untrammelled shale gas exploration. Ooooh! Untrammelled devastation! Bye-bye Singleton and the annual Maize Maze. I knew you well (sic). There is nothing alleged about methane in tap water. It is recognised that, in certain areas of the US, methane from natural seepage has been present in tap water for decades, long before fracking occured. While there is plenty of speculation that fracking may cause contamination of drinking water the proof remains elusive and anecdotal (rumour and alarmism). The outright alarmist lie is the statement I have highlighted. Try Googling for it. All youll find is fears that farting cows are causing global warming and a lot of ifs, buts and shale gas handwringing alarmism from greenie blogs. What you wont find is actual devastation from untrammelled shale gas exploration. Phelim Not Evil, Just Wrong McAleer thoroughly debunks the Gasland claims. Shame the Grauniad

numpties didnt do a little investigative journalism of their own. They prefer to frighten scienceignorant Singleton pensioners out of their rocking chairs instead. Yes, there were two minor seismic events near Blackpool this year. A 2.3 pointer on 1st April and a 1.4 pointer on May 27th. I didnt feel a thing. My ornaments didnt rattle and my roof didnt cave in. So the minuscule tremors were caused by Cuadrilla drilling thousands of feet below the Lancashire earth. So what. But then, it seems that the Frack Off protestors trying to prevent Cuadrilla boring holes, equate earthquakes no one can feel and that are only detectable using instruments with the real devastation caused by movement in the Japanese subduction zone earlier this year. Its the same stupid greenie groupthink that Clegg is using to prevent the building of new nuclear power stations in Britain even though we dont have seismically induced tsunamis. Of course, Al Jabeeba gets its haporth in. It is highly probable that shale gas test drilling triggered earth tremors in Lancashire, a study has found. Gotta love those scare quotes. To be honest, Id put money on that high probablility being an absolute. You see, I dont think its possible to drill thousands of feet down and not cause small, seismic tremors. However, Im not about to put my house on the market and flee Lancashire while waving my arms in the air and screaming blue murder. But the report, commissioned by energy firm Cuadrilla, also said the quakes were due to an unusual combination of geology at the well site. It was the wrong kind of geology wot dun it. So Says the Cuardrilla commissioned report which absolutely has to be biased. What a feeble excuse, eh Beeboids? It said conditions which caused the minor earthquakes were unlikely to occur again. I doubt that. But the quakes are so tiny they are not a major cause for concern. The Beeboids and Frack Off on the other hand Protesters opposed to fracking, a gas extraction method, said the report did not inspire confidence. Of course it didnt. Shale gas doesnt feature in the greenie dystopian nightmare utopian dream of blackouts boundless renwable energy from wind turbines and solar panels that dont produce much energy at all actually. Also, a shale gas boom will kick the feed-in tariff into the long grass and revive our struggling economy. Hopefully, all those subsidy parasites greenie industries will go to the wall when an enlightened government plugs the udders of the sustainable energy cash cow and distributes last fags and blindfolds. Well a girl can dream, cant she? A study by The British Geological Survey placed the epicentre for each quake about 500m away from the Preese Hall-1 well, at Weeton, near Blackpool. Yeah, unfortunately the British Geological Survey scientists dont believe that drilling for shale gas at Preese Hall poses a threat of devastating earthquakes. But thats not good enough for Frack Off. Oh, no. The zealots need to invent an even bigger scare and here it is:

Protesters have called for an end to fracking. There have been concerns that potentially carcinogenic chemicals could escape during the process and find their way into drinking water sources. The tigers might escape from Blackpool zoo and chow down on kids anti-fracking protesters. Does this mean we have to have them put down as a precaution? The contamination of irrigation water means that everyones food supplies could potentially be affected, the Frack Off spokesman added. Its going to affect everyone? Fracking takes place 2 kilometres down. Please explain how the hell fracking fluid is going to contaminate surface water and affect everyone. Can one catastrophic blow out from the Preese Hall well end the food chain as we know it? Are we talking swathes of Grauniadistic untrammelled devastation here? Do I seriously need to worry about buying Cape grapes, Heinz beans and Spanish broccoli? Or is the Frack Off spokesman pulling alarmist soundbites out of his arse? Friends of the Earths senior climate campaigner Tony Bosworth said: This report shows fracking for shale gas caused earth tremors in Lancashire - experience in the US shows it could also pollute air and water supplies. Polluting air as well as water? So not only will fracking fluids poison our water its going to be raining the bloody stuff too? Can this shale gas monster possibly get any worse? Well Tony Bosworth thinks so. Extracting shale gas would suck vital funding away from clean and safe energy alternatives that could create thousands more UK jobs. Mass unemployment and no more wind turbines. Oh noes! An early seismic detection system wont be enough to make local people feel safe - there should be no more fracking in Britain until the health and environmental impacts are fully understood. Protecting people from cheap energy minor earthquakes that dont affect them in the slightest. How thoughtful. Of course, Greenpeace has to stick its oar in too. Doug Parr, chief scientist at Greenpeace, added: Anyone who believes shale gas is the solution to our energy needs is being hopelessly naive. Annoyingly realistic you mean. Or maybe the US shale gas boom is an illusion There are significant unknowns about the local and global impacts of fracking, illustrated by the conclusion by seismologists that recent fracking in the North West was responsible for a minor earthquake. Two earthquakes actually. And I couldnt give two hoots about the global impact of quakes that wont even create ripples in my Earl Gray. However, I do give two hoots about access to an affordable and secure supply of constant light and heat as the climate cools.

He said fracking was a distraction from the real challenges and that real energy solutions would be found in using renewable sources. Real energy solutions using renewable sources that produce zero energy when the weather goes moody, as it frequently does. Ahah hah hah hah hah hah hah. Please, do fuck off Doug Parr and take your humourless and people harming stand up comedy act with you. Of course, we cant go without a final word from WWF. Nick Molho, head of energy policy at World Wildlife Fund UK, reiterated a call for a moratorium on fracking in the UK. These findings are worrying, and are likely to add to the very real concerns that people have about fracking and shale gas, he said. Real concerns? Or concerns manipulated by the alarmist tripe the likes of the Grauniad and the eco-loon NGOs are so desperately trying to spread through the local population (to very limited success). Im surprised that they havent advised us to think of the chiiiiiiiildren. Maybe theyre saving that one for the final volley. Let us hope that more level heads will weigh the independent geological reports against the alarmist bias on the Cuadrilla Preece Hall rig and give the green light to drill, baby, drill. On a final note, last week we held a County Council by-election after our local councillor sadly died. The greens (who achieved a humiliating last place) were running a rather bizarre, bipolar campaign. They were against Cuadrilla and shale gas on the grounds that methane is a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. On the same ticket they were campaigning for the creation of a local rubbish tip Fred Z November 6, 2011 at 12:57 pm I dont think its possible to drill thousands of feet down and not cause small, seismic tremors. You and I are on the same side but this was a silly thing to write. A butterfly flapping its wings in Mexico will cause small seismic tremors in Lancashire. Even the lefty dolts at wikipedia know that earthquakes under 2.0 occur continuously and those of 2.0-2.9 are Generally not felt, but recorded. with 1.3 million of them per year. Lets do some maths. A 2.0 quake has 63 MJ of energy, a 2.5 one has 360 MJ. Gasoline contains about 35 MJ/L. Every time some lefty jerk drives to a demo and burns 2 litres of gas he releases as much energy as a 2.0 quake. For a 2.5 quake the dolt has to drive for a couple of hours. Big deal. If you have ever watched a fracking operation, and I have, there is a monster pump pushing drilling fluid down the hole and into the rock with the intention of fracturing the rock. The fluid is full of particulates designed to keep the pressure-formed cracks open after the pressure is released. It is just like starting a split in log and putting a stick in to keep the split open. The monster pump is usually diesel powered and often burns gallons per minute of fuel. There might easily be 10, 20, a 100 thousand litres of diesel energy forced down a hole. That sounds a lot but it is such a tiny little itsy bitsy bit compared to the energy required to shift rock miles down as to be pitiful.

Also, a well bore might be 8 inches across and go down a klick and then go horizontal for many klicks. It is not physically possible for such a small pinprick to cause an earthquake unless the seismic tension is so great its going to burst soon anyway. Its like sticking a pin in a balloon, only seismic balloons rarely deflate on their own - they just keep growing until they pop. Indeed, a rational argument can be made for massive drilling and fracking to pop those seismic balloons while they are small. Im in western Canada where we have been producing gas for export to the USA for generations. We have been fracking for 30 years that I know of with perfect safety. Even our hippy dippy lefties have given up on the fracking issue, and they are every bit as innumerate as your hippy dippy dumbasses. Lynne November 6, 2011 at 6:51 pm Fred Z - we do not get many earthquakes in this part of the world. Hardly any at all in fact. The epicentre of both minor quakes was within 500m of the rig site and at a depth of 1 - 2km. No one, not even Cuadrilla itself, believes thats a coincidence. The geomechanical study of the Bowland Shale Seismicity suggests that two fluid injection events probably caused a slip plane or a series of slip planes to shear. The geology around these parts includes salt planes, mudstone, marl, sandstone and millstone grit all of which sits on top of the shale which gives you a lot of slip planes. Bowland shale is very hard rock that requires high pressure fracking, up to ten times higher than the US plays. Such high pressures can trigger seismicity, more so if a slip plane fails as a result. Im assuming, of course, that the geologists reponsible for the study know what they are talking about. They tend to be more thorough and precise than climate scientists. So we experienced two unusual, similar profile but very minor seismic events and that little balloon prick was more than likely the culprit, aided by our local geology. The point the blog post is trying to make is that we are not going to be shaken from our beds, crushed underneath toppling masonry or disappear down a gaping sinkhole. Unfortunately too many people will listen to the Greenie alarmism because it is echoed in the media and they have insufficient knowledge or are too lazy to find out for themselves and form their own opinions. When a Greenie screams Earthquake! many people automatically think Japan!. Why else would people demand the cancellation of the nuclear power station programme because of fears of a UK Fukushima? There are still a lot of people in the UK who believe that the BBC is an honest, unbiased institution even though it constantly pushes its dishonest, one-sided, deeply authoritarian AGW (and political) agenda in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary. I make no apologies for blogging about this. Perhaps you would care to research the local geology for yourself. Maybe then you will understand that the Preese Hall drill site has encountered problems that apparently do not trouble the Canadian shale gas operations (which have my hearty support). Perhaps then, duly informed, you will return and tell me whether or not my comment was silly. You can read the geomechanical study here. Thanks for taking the time to comment. :0)

Sunday, November 06, 2011

Fracking hell
Posted by Devil's Kitchen at 11/06/2011 05:12:00 PM Counting Cats has a good article up about the hysteria surrounding shale gas fracking. As an amusing diversion, I thought that I'd have a look at Frack Offthe campaign site for those with absolutely fuck all idea about science or economics. These morons do not seem to be simply against fracking, mind you... The UK is also threatened by a massive expansion in opencast coal mining, deep water oil drilling in the North Sea, Coal Bed Methane and a new generation of even more dangerous nuclear power stations. So, essentially, these people are against any kind of reasonable power supply at all. So, please, when your granny freezes to death this wintereither because she can't pay the fuel bills, or because the super wind turbines have failed to actually deliver any powerdo remember to send a Thank You card to Frack Off. Personally, however, the most eloquent monument to the complete stupidity of those running Frack Off is the comment that they have let stand on their front page. It purports to be front a Gillian Craig and runs thusly: [Emphasis mine.] From the first time I heard about this operation some months ago I was concerned, not having a scientific mind in any way whatsoever but quite a logical one, I started questioning about the void left by fracking and then finding out that the void is filled with water, which is not the natural substance to replace gas in the void created. Water is not a solid substance and will move and soak away, I am certainly not surprised that earth tremors have been associated with this practice. STOP IT NOW There you go people"water is not a solid substance". Whereas, of course, gas is. Er... Still, Gillian Craig is right about one thing: she really doesn't have "a scientific mind in any way whatsoever"although her claim to have "quite a logical one" is belied by the sheer, rampant stupidity of her remarks. What's really funny, though, is that if you note the link, you'll see that Gillian's spouting is comment #11but it is the only one that appears on that page. Which means that this was the best comment that they could find and that at least another 10 disappeared down the memory hole (presumably because the commenters disagreed with Frack Off). And that, ladies and gentlemen, is all that you need to know about the arseholes at Frack Off: that they don't tolerate free speech, they tout the stupidity of people like Gillian Craig, they are pigignorant about science and economics, and that they think that 2,700 people dying of cold every winter just isn't a big enough death toll. What a lovely bunch they must be.

Only a totalitarian New World Order can save us now says Naomi Klein
By James Delingpole Politics Last updated: November 13th, 2011

Klein: No Logo, No Shopping, No Freedom No Logo author Naomi Klein has a solution to climate change and it goes like this: punitive taxation; massive wealth re-distribution; the abolition of free trade and free markets; a stateenforced end to to the "cult of shopping"; the whole to be supervised by a New World Order of selfless illuminati (who presumably resemble Naomi Klein). If it weren't so scary it would almost be funny, the way the leftie Canadian activist on the basis of no evidence whatsoever declares that the time has come to strip the human race of all its hard-won freedoms in order to save the planet from a non-existent problem. Unfortunately, Klein means it and her audience takes her seriously. Just read the first comment below her screed: I can't say enough good things about this article. It's a manifesto for the next 100 years. Corporate capitalism is doomed by the immutable fact of finite resources; it will require planning and sharing to sustain civilization in the future, which is heretical thinking in the boardrooms of elite capitalists. O-K. And the rationale for doing all this stuff would be what, exactly, Naomi? Some new devastating proof you've managed to unearth, perhaps, showing once and for all that the measurements are wrong and global warming didn't stop in 1998? A dazzling refutation of Svensmark's cosmic ray theory? Surprising new data showing that, contrary to the false consciousness promoted by the running dog lackey capitalist pigs who write our history books, totalitarian planning regimes of the kind you advocate in fact brought nothing but bounty, happiness and environmental loveliness to Stalin's Soviet Union, Hitler's Germany, Mao's China, Pol Pot's Cambodia and Kim Il Sung's North Korea?

Nope. All Naomi can manage by way of justification is this: Before I go any further, let me be absolutely clear: as 97 percent of the worlds climate scientists attest, the Heartlanders are completely wrong about the science. The heat-trapping gases released into the atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels are already causing temperatures to increase. If we are not on a radically different energy path by the end of this decade, we are in for a world of pain. Er, Naomi. Here are some things you should know before you type out your next eco-fascistic horror rant. 1. That "97 per cent" figure: it's kind of an urban myth. 2. The heat-trapping gas and fossil fuel theory: it's at best moot, not least because the "feedbacks" as you'd know if you'd bothered to do a scintilla of research are still so ill-understood. 3. the "radically different energy path" bit: Says who? And on what evidence? 4. "a world of pain". Right. And you'll have done a cost benefit analysis here will you? You can show us that the freedom-destroying, economy-ruining totalitarianism you advocate will a) make the blindest bit of difference to global mean temperatures and b) cause less pain than a world where it's ever so slightly warmer and where people are free to shop without jackbooted Canadian eco-activists stamping up and down shrieking: "Das ist Verboten!"? I don't think so.

Yes, Naomi Klein is an idiot

November 13th, 2011
The abundance of scientific research showing we have pushed nature beyond its limits does not just demand green products and market-based solutions; it demands a new civilizational paradigm, one grounded not in dominance over nature but in respect for natural cycles of renewaland acutely sensitive to natural limits, including the limits of human intelligence. .. In addition to reversing the thirty-year privatization trend, a serious response to the climate threat involves recovering an art that has been relentlessly vilified during these decades of market fundamentalism: planning. Lots and lots of planning. Sigh. So weve got to acknowledge that were all entirely dim in the face of Gaia: then use our intelligence to plan what weve got to do about it. The two positions are mutually incompatible dearie. If were dim then weve got to go the route of try it, suck it and see: a market based process. If were all gargantually intelligent with perfect knowledge then we can plan. But we cant plan if were dim and ill informed, can we? It gets worse, of course: Another bonus: this type of farming is much more labor intensive than industrial agriculture, which means that farming can once again be a substantial source of employment.

Yes, shes cheering the idea that we reintroduce peasantry as a valid career choice. Somehow its never those with columns in The Nation who have to be bent over double in the fields though, is it? In an economy organized to respect natural limits, the use of energy-intensive long-haul transport would need to be rationedreserved for those cases where goods cannot be produced locally or where local production is more carbon-intensive. (For example, growing food in greenhouses in cold parts of the United States is often more energy-intensive than growing it in the South and shipping it by light rail.) Yes love. We know how to do this too. Stick a tax on carbon emissions and let the market sort it out. The way out is to embrace a managed transition to another economic paradigm, using all the tools of planning discussed above. Growth would be reserved for parts of the world still pulling themselves out of poverty. Meanwhile, in the industrialized world, those sectors that are not governed by the drive for increased yearly profit (the public sector, co-ops, local businesses, nonprofits) would expand their share of overall economic activity, as would those sectors with minimal ecological impacts (such as the caregiving professions). A great many jobs could be created this way. But the role of the corporate sector, with its structural demand for increased sales and profits, would have to contract. Thats just lovely, isnt it? Growth would be reserved. Anyone got any idea at all of how that could be achieved in anything even slightly resembling a society that has any freedom or liberty left in it at all? And of course shes grossly, stupidly, wrong in her description of what is the cure for climate change. What we actually need is a globalised market based economy with a carbon tax. And thats all we need. NICK LUKE // Nov 13, 2011 at 4:39 pm OMG!!! Shes just re-invented the USSR. Ian B // Nov 13, 2011 at 4:46 pm OMG!!! Shes just re-invented the USSR. Actually, no. Its even more evil than that. The communists and capitalists shared a recognition of the importance of economic growth, but differed over how to achieve it. Communism was entirely focussed on industrialisation- of industry, of farming, of everything. Hence the infamous tractor statistics. Which is why the current wave of Puritan-Romantics (yes, this is a very 18th century thing) are even worse. They dont even want to make tractors; in fact theyre opposed to tractors, because a tractor produces economic growth which is, you know, evil. Capitalists want a factory that employs as few as possible for the most tractors. Communists want a factory that employs everybody for the most tractors. Puritan-romantics want a factory that employs everybody and doesnt actually produce any tractors. Its a whole further order of magnitude of stupid were dealing with here.

Meet the new plan: same as the old plan

Nov 132011 I have Tim Worstall to thank for raising my blood pressure on this fine Sunday afternoon and distracting me from some work Im supposed to be doing. His reaming of this article by Naomi Klein in The Nation is brief, but extensive enough to hint that she might be saying some stuff that I particularly hate. There is a run-of-the-mill Left position, that revolves around general ideas of environment, equality, and government involvement that I can sort of tolerate, even if I dont agree with it. And then there is the crap spouted by people like Naomi Klein, who seem to view themselves as the best thing since sliced Marx, and in that tradition of philosophising about a new world order. This group also includes Madeleine Bunting. And if theres one thing that really gets my goat, its assholes holding forth about overturning the current narrative and bringing about a completely new social and economic paradigm. Especially when its actually a really old one. Ill declare my interest and say this is partly because the current narrative isnt so bad (for me), but theres another facet, and that is the blind outrage I feel when someone talks about junking the collective effect of the individual, diffuse, organic behaviour of billions of people. You cant get different results without changing the inputs, and the natural way to do thismaking a case, hoping its reasonable, and watching it become a trend if it isisnt good enough for the Kleins and Buntings of this world. There will be no grass-roots, bottom-up behaviour change, even though this is how it has only and ever worked. No, instead we shall have planning. Lots and lots of planning. And in the service of what, precisely? Why, a new paradigm that overturns capitalism and delivers an earthly paradise of low-carbon equality of wealth. The infuriating thing about this is reading how they propose to do it, and losing ones temper about the fact that it makes no sense. Lets start with Kleins thesis. The abundance of scientific research showing we have pushed nature beyond its limits does not just demand green products and market-based solutions; it demands a new civilizational paradigm, one grounded not in dominance over nature but in respect for natural cycles of renewaland acutely sensitive to natural limits, including the limits of human intelligence. That would not be a new civilisational paradigm but a very old one: the one humans lived in for many thousands of years, the rhythms of their lives attuned acutely to the natural cycles of growth, rains, harvest, dormancyor else growth, drought, famine, and death. Many people in the world still actually live this way, and not only does it suck, we in the first world acknowledge that it sucks because we call these people poor and try to help them not have to live attuned to the cycles of nature. This is mainly because, while human intelligence might have its limits, inability to overcome the cycles of nature isnt one of them.

Not that any of this really matters, because Klein doesnt want to do this really, and nothing in her planning would achieve it, or is even designed to achieve it. Her six-point plan bears no resemblance to anything remotely natural. Its not even as sensible as my colleagues ten-point plan for when he becomes dictator of India. That one starts like this: 1. Remove all restrictions on trade. 2. Legalise prostitution. 3. End all licensing laws. 4. Introduce the death penalty. 5. Put all corrupt people to death. 6. etc. So lets look at Kleins plan. With the rhetorical crap stripped out, it goes like this. 1. Create a huge government deficit by building massive green infrastructure. Yeah, okay. Thats just run-of-the-mill leftism, but well come back to it. 2. Every community in the world to plan how it will stop using fossil fuels. My favourite part of this is how collective lifestyle imposition is described as participatory democracy. I guess it doesnt occur to Klein that people dont require participatory democracy when they are free to make their own individual decisions. Its only when some group is trying to force its shit on everyone else that the twin charade of engagement and consultation is invoked. Seriously, whenever you hear that youre about to be consulted or engaged with, abandon all hope, because it means some decision about you has been made without you and youre now about to be told what it is. 2a. This planning should focus on collective priorities rather than corporate profitability. Somehow this is something to do with making sure those people whose current jobs are entwined with fossil fuels dont end up left without a job. This makes no sense. For one thing, there is nothing more capitalist than a job. A job is what you do to earn money (sometimes also known as capital), with which you buy the stuff you need to live. You cant sweep away capitalism and keep jobs. It just doesnt work. A job is not some kind of intrinsically good way of keeping oneself from growing bored with leisure. A job is work someone pays you to do. And jobs are not the same thing as work; this is why we dont call hoovering and dusting housejobs. Lets also address the problem of profitability. You know, the one where profit is the positive difference between outgoings and incomings. You know, the one where that differencethat profitis what the government takes a slice of (tax) to get its money to build lots of lovely infrastructure? 2b. Re-introduce labour-intensive agriculture in order to create jobs. Labour-intensive agriculture is otherwise known as peasant farming, and peasant farming is not a job. Its work. Its the work one does not to have money with which to buy food, but to have food to eat. Its back-breaking work that is harder than a job, less fun than a job, and less rewarding than a

job. It is another old paradigm that weve actually spent some centuries now trying to get away from. Were still trying to help third-world subsistence farmers get away from it. Returning to it is a shitty idea, and a really stupid plan for achieving a really stupid thing. 3. Rein in corporations ability to supply and burn fossil fuels. Thats all well and good, but theres nothing here about what happens to all of the other corporations where theres no fuel. I work in a web software company. The other day, some builders over the road accidentally cut the power cable, and for two hours, the entire neighbourhood went dark. Our whole company was paralysedno routers so no internet, no phones. Within ten minutes, the place was like something out of Boccaccio, with employees sitting in dark rooms telling stories about other power cuts theyd endured. Imagine that all over the world, and its only a matter of time before hundreds of millions of people start contemplating peasant farming as the only alternative to eating each other. 4. End non-local trade. Wow, again, were back to the fucking Middle Ages. Thank you very much for coming to dinner, Ms Klein. Have a turnip. No, really, thats all weve got. A turnip. We have to source our food locally, you see. Perhaps you would like a bit of the salted rat Ive been saving up for our meat during the winter? What do you mean, thats a protected species? 5. End growth in the first world. Hey! You there! Yes, you with a good idea for streamlining this process! Stop it right now. Either these people do not understand what growth is, or they dont understand what humans are. Humans are problem-solving creatures. Growth is not using more resources to make more profit. Growth is solving problems. Often, it is solving the problem of how do we do this thing with fewer resources? Klein obviously doesnt understand this. To her, use of resources is to be minimised, except when the resource is human labouruse of that is to be maximised. I mean, am I going crazy in the rare sunshine, or does anyone else see that were going backward here? The whole reason we use stuff is so that we dont have to use people, because back when we had no stuff, we had things like 30-year lifespans from toiling in the fields, and slaves. Its like shes saying we should use less stuff so that we can use more people, because its good for people to be used, because it means that they have work, and its good for people to have work, because it means that theyre not being underused. Its so recursive that shes in danger of suggesting that jobs need humans in order to live. 6. Tax people and corporations. Were back to the whole profitability thing again. Now that weve spent some time using participatory democracy to make sure nobody cares about profit, and some more time ensuring that we stop using resources to make things, and still more time ensuring that no one makes money from using or supplying fossil fuelswhere is the money, precisely, that the governments going to take in tax? When everywhere is a co-op or a peasant farm, producing only what people need locally, where is the excess capacity that the government can take in tax?

This is the whole problem with this stupid obsession with the evils of profit. Profit is what the government taxes. Therefore, no profit, no tax. No tax, no government infrastructure projects or green subsidies or anything else the government is supposed to pay for because the private sector wont do it because theres no profit in it. Jesus. Klein sums up: There is no joy in being right about something so terrifying. But for progressives, there is responsibility in it, because it means that our ideasinformed by indigenous teachings as well as by the failures of industrial state socialismare more important than ever. It means that a green-left worldview, which rejects mere reformism and challenges the centrality of profit in our economy, offers humanitys best hope of overcoming these overlapping crises. Yeah, okay. Theres nothing in your plan that didnt come straight out of the playbook of 1381, only in 1381, the peasants were revolting because it was such a shitty fucking plan and they didnt like living under it. More to the point, it makes no sense. The whole point of this new paradigm is to stop climate change and, as an added bonus, improve equality and participatory democracy. But go back to the first premiseclimate change should be stoppedand take a moment to ask again why that is so. Climate change is bad because it will destroy our way of life. It will kill a bunch of people outright in floods and storms. It will reduce the land area we have to live on, and reduce how much food we can grow on it. It will make many of the natural resources we depend on unavailable. It will make miserable, cramped subsistence farmers of us all. And the way were supposed to avert this disaster is to do it to ourselves first? What a pile of complete nonsense. As Klein herself admits, the dangers of climate change are being used as a pretext to re-order the entirety of human life according to the progressive plan of using up excess wealth in order to maximise human work. That is the most backward, fucked-up, and human-hating plan ever dreamed up. Anyone who backs it has a perception of life on earth so diseased and warped that theyre barely recognisable as human beings themselves. Posted by bellagerens at 3:02 pm

Naomi Klein, Profit and Freedom

by Frank Davis James Delingpole and Bella Gerens have both been taking shots at Naomi Kleins recent article in The Nation, Capitalism vs. the Climate, in which she wrote, among other things: It means that a green-left worldview, which rejects mere reformism and challenges the centrality of profit in our economy, offers humanitys best hope of overcoming these overlapping crises.

Its one of the central dogmas of the Left that Profit Is Evil. In fact, it used to be one of my own dogmas. If something cost some amount of work to make, shouldnt it be sold at that price? Wasnt selling it for a higher price a form of theft, and asking something for nothing? Thats how I used to think, but its not how I think any more. My thinking about this didnt change because of anything Id read anywhere. It came of beginning to see that a great many goods not only cost some amount of time to make, but also in use provided some amount of time in return. Take something as simple as food. It costs some amount of time to produce food. But that food, when consumed, provides some period of continued life (what Buckminster Fuller called forward days). Its the most elementary fact of life. Food has a cost, but it also has a value, both of which can be measured in hours or days. It may cost, for example, 2 hours of effort to produce some food, and that food keeps you alive for 10 hours. And the interesting thing about this elementary fact of life is that the amount of forward days of life that food provides must be greater than or equal to the amount of time it takes to produce that food. And in practice this means that it must always be greater. Because if its less, youll soon be dead. And heres an example perhaps the prime example of how doing some work generates more of something than was originally invested in it. Its a way of getting something for nothing, or more for less. You work 2 hours, and you win 10 hours. And this elementary fact of life is in turn reflected in the economy in which such goods are traded. Theyll regularly sell for more than they cost to make. And thats where profit comes from. So if, like Naomi Klein, you wish to challenge the centrality of profit in our economy, you may as well be challenging the centrality of gravity or energy or the laws of motion in our universe. Because it really is that fundamental. We cant live without profit. When profit has been banished from the world, life also will have been banished. For all life, from plants to animals, relies on the natural profitability of nature as plants scoop up enough sunlight in the daytime to last them through the night, and animals eat enough sugar-laden plants to also see them through the night. But Ive never seen anyone ever justify profit in the manner I just have. Bella Gerens doesnt do so. She writes: Lets also address the problem of profitability. You know, the one where profit is the positive difference between outgoings and incomings. You know, the one where that differencethat profitis what the government takes a slice of (tax) to get its money to build lots of lovely infrastructure? This is a dig at the Left, who rely on taxes to fund all their various pet projects. And its perfectly true: no profits means no taxes. But it doesnt amount to a justification of profit, except at one remove. It doesnt explain how profit is a good and necessary thing. Much the same kind of reasoning can be used to dispose of most of the rest of what Naomi Klein says: The abundance of scientific research showing we have pushed nature beyond its limits does not just demand green products and market-based solutions; it demands a new civilizational

paradigm, one grounded not in dominance over nature but in respect for natural cycles of renewaland acutely sensitive to natural limits, including the limits of human intelligence. This is another characteristic of the Left, that they believe that we can change our ways at will, and create a better and fairer society if enough people want it that way. Its the assumption that we are free to choose how to re-order our affairs as we are free to choose how to re-order the furniture in our houses. We are not thus free. We are only free to do what we like in the interval between when the food has been produced and its nutrient energy value has been used up, and we must repeat the process all over again. If it takes 2 hours to produce sufficient food to keep us alive for 10 hours, then we will only have 8 hours in which we are free to do what we like, and re-organise the furniture. And if it takes 10 hours to produce sufficient food to keep us alive for another 10 hours, then we will spend all our days producing food, and we will have no freedom whatsoever. We are not free simply by virtue of being alive. We may be alive, but almost completely constrained to one single activity. But the Naomi Kleins of the world will quite happily set out to re-order all our (unfree) lives in favour of one grounded not in dominance over nature but in respect for natural cycles of renewal. And one with chintz curtains in the windows, and leatherette sofas circling the floor? We are not free to do any such thing. I could go on, but I wont. All I would say is that while the aversion of the Left to profit, and to growth, and to real freedom, is not tackled head on, at source, they will never stop dreaming up one mad scheme after another to re-order the world, every single one of which will result in the increased toil and suffering and death of millions of people.

Naomi Kleins crippling problem with numbers

November 12th, 2011

Naomi Klein Photo: Mariusz Kubik Naomi Klein was the wrong person to send to a heavy-weight science conference in Capitalism vs Climate she notices hundreds of details, but theyre all the wrong ones. Naomi can tell you the colour of the speakers hair, what row they sat in, and the expression on their face it adds such an authentic flavor to the words, but shes blind to the details that count. She can explain the atmosphere of the room, but not the atmosphere of the Earth. One of these things matters, and Klein has picked the wrong one. Her long attack on the Heartland ICCC conference this year is all color and style, and nothing of consequence the lights are on and no brain is home. Unpack the loquacious pencraft and we wallow in innumerate arguments that confuse cause and effect, peppered with petulant namecalling. She can throw stones, but she cant count past one.

Her aversion to numbers is crippling

Consider how she reduces planetary dynamics to a Yes or No answer. She thinks each skeptical scientist contradicts the next: Is there no warming, or is there warming but its not a problem? And if there is no warming, then whats all this talk about sunspots causing temperatures to rise? But oops, Naomi, the numbers matter, numbers like how much warming, and how many years are we talking about. Is the planet warming? Well, since when, Naomi, since when? You might only be able to answer Yes, because thats the ritual litany youve been trained to say, but independent scientists talk about whether its cooled in the last 10 years, warmed for the last 300 and changed since William the Conqueror. When it comes to the warming in the last century, is it by 0.7 C or is it really 0.5? This is where the scientists at the Heartland conference were at. Like a color-blind art critic, its as if any number bigger than zero or one went right over her head. Her thesis sinks quickly to a parody of intellectual wit. Naomi thinks she can understand planetary radiative physics with psychoanalysis. (Essentially she knows shes right because those who disagree vote the wrong way too).

Those with strong egalitarian and communitarian worldviews (marked by an inclination toward collective action and social justice, concern about inequality and suspicion of corporate power) overwhelmingly accept the scientific consensus on climate change. On the other hand, those with strong hierarchical and individualistic worldviews (marked by opposition to government assistance for the poor and minorities, strong support for industry and a belief that we all get what we deserve) overwhelmingly reject the scientific consensus. Unwittingly shes admitting that she picks her scientific theories according to her political aims.

She makes the child-like assumption that everyone else thinks the same flawed way she does
She believes those who disagree with her on the science do it because they vote differently completely missing the obvious truth that a slab of the population can do what she cant: that is, think. Shes got cause and effect completely back to front. Its not that skeptics pick their political masters, then follow the party line they pick the theory and then find the right party. Klein apparently cant imagine doing something as radical as looking at the evidence first, then picking the politicians who dont seem to be barking mad, gullible patsies, fawning to the latest taxmongering fallacy. Its frankly a bland non-event that at the moment independent -thinkers lean heavily Republican. Which Democrat can see through the scam?

] Pew Poll: The turning point for Republican voters was in 2008. [Source: http://www.peoplepress.org/2009/10/22/fewer-americans-see-solid-evidence-of-global-warming/ You only need to look back five years when many Republicans thought CO2 was a problem as well, to see Kleins pocket-psychoanalysis disprove itself. What changed first, the views of the Republican leaders, or the views of the voters? The answer is the polls shifted long beforethe candidates fell all over themselves to make sure no one thought they were fooled by the climatescare. Did the Republican world-view radically change in the last five years, or is the Democrat worldview stopping people from admitting they were wrong?

Kleins denial of reality

Bad manners always say more about the speaker than the target. Klein deceives herself with her name-calling denier. She cant name anything scientific that the so-called deniers deny. Instead she fell for the Richard Muller blatant fakery, where he pretended to be a skeptic, then was so conveniently converted. Shes the one denying that he was always a fan of the IPCC, and always thought CO2 was pollution. The myth that Big-Oil drives the skeptics is manna for the confused, who cant fathom why so many people dont pander to the same messianic saviours that they do. Klein obediently totes out the $900 billion the top five oil corporates make in profits, but completely ignores the $10 Trillion market in carbon credits that a global trade could have produced. Again, the numbers are just too complex for her Exxon and friends might lose 5 or 10% of their bottom line to the monster carbon market, but the carbon market fans lose 100% of their profits if the big scare is exposed as a fake. Theres ten times the money pushing for a carbon market, and Klein blindly acts as a sock puppet for the big financiers. The scientists speaking at Heartlands Climate Conference were so far ahead of Klein, they might as well have been speaking Urdu.

The logical vacuum sucks

The entire 9600 word tome depends on one sole point: the evidence that doubling CO2 causes major warming, not just 0.5 degrees, but 3.5 degrees. (There are those problematic numbers again). Klein starts from the assumption that the way to know if the third rock from the sun is artificially warming is to parrot government scientists hailing Gods appointed by the politicians. Thus everything she writes, collapses from the start. Science is not about following government appointed prophets, but about the evidence, the measurements, and the observations. The weather balloons, satellites, ocean buoys and ice cores are unanimous the modelers-of-doom are exaggerating. Klein never goes there. Her religion doesnt permit it, and shed have to deal with numbers. When Pat Michaels suggested that airconditioners would save people from heat stroke in France, Klein called it callous. Why? Apparently people are dying in Africa, in droughts, and Naomi thinks that airconditioners in France are causing it. Somehow its reasonable for the French to die of heat-stroke on the off-chance that by switching off the air-con they might create some rain in Johannesburg. Global dumbness is scary. How could reasonable people believe this?

Her reasoning disproves itself

By building her whole argument on un-scientific quicksand, Klein makes mindless statements that unwittingly apply more to her own arguments than anyone elses. She explores how the right has systematically used crisesreal and trumped upto push through a brutal ideological agenda designed not to solve the problems that created the crises but rather to enrich elites. No one uses trumped-up-crises better than the left: Which team is demanding billions to stop the storms? And which elites will be enriched? The carbon traders and financiers. The so-called victims of right-ideologies are theoretical postulates of the future. The victims of the left are here and now. Which brutal ideology fed corn to cars instead of starving Haitian children? Which fantasy-team thinks bat-chopping rotors in Denmark will stop floods in Bangladesh?

Whoopsie wheres the death threat?

Naomi cant even manage to recognize a real death threat from a statement of someone who wont cow to her faith. She recites the lines about death-threats but cant even name one example of an actual threat: Many climate scientists report receiving death threats, as do authors of articles on subjects as seemingly innocuous as energy conservation. (As one letter writer put it to Stan Cox, author of a book critical of air-conditioning, You can pry my thermostat out of my cold dead hands.) The letter writer was not threatening anyone, except with his determination to set the temperature in his own home.

Accepting the science means religious devotion to the establishment line

When Klein says people accept the science, she misses the detail that the science she refers too, is the permitted science advocated by government scientists, not the science discussed by independent scientists. Once again, its not about the evidence, its reduced to Government Scientist: Good; Independent Scientist: Bad. Wheres the evidence that man-made emissions cause global warming? Only religious devotees think the answer starts and ends with 97% of our climate scientists say so. Thats a logical fallacy, its only 75 scientists, and many of them will admit their models are flawed and the uncertainties are large. The consensus was fake from the start. Klein thinks the answers to feeding the poor lies with Big Government, but rational thinkers know that more than anything, the fate of the poor depends on clear thinking, real evidence, and polite debate. None of which is on offer in this article. Reading Klein is like visiting a parallel universe her religious devotion to her ideology means nearly every sentence is the exact opposite of the truth. Mores the pity that The Nation has no editors who recognise innumerate drivel and an ideological rant based on a logical black hole. Bad mannered bluster, blind assumptions, and religious rationalization have always been the tool of witchdoctors and con artists. Naomi Klein: Nice writing, shame she cant think.

Green 'tax' to rise every year... but don't worry, ministers claim overall bills will be lower - because their policies will make you use less energy

Chris Huhne makes comments during Commons statement Claim based on assumption home energy use drops by a third

By Sean Poulter Last updated at 7:58 AM on 24th November 2011

Green deal: Huhne claimed that prices will be 94 per year lower than if the Government didn't intervene

Families will pay 280 a year in green taxes by 2020 to fund the shift to wind, solar and nuclear power, ministers admitted yesterday. The huge cost faced by ordinary people will pay for the Governments pledge to cut carbon emissions and be the greenest ever. Households currently pay 89 a year on their bills for the green energy drive, but this will increase every year to reach 280 by 2020, according to the Governments Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC). The taxes will provide almost 8billion a year towards the 200billion cost of vast wind farms, nuclear power stations, a new pylon network, and to put up solar panels. But in a bizarre statement, energy and climate change secretary Chris Huhne told the House of Commons that his policies mean consumers will actually be better off.

He said: By 2020, we expect household bills to be 7 per cent or 94 lower than they would otherwise be without our policies. Britains homes will be cheaper to heat and light than if we did nothing. His claim is based on a controversial assumption that families will make vast reductions in their electricity and gas bills by 2020 wiping out the 280 in green taxes. It also assumes there will be a large uptake of government-backed schemes for insulation projects. The revelation threatens to spark a revolt from consumers, who are suffering the biggest and longest squeeze on living standards in more than 60 years. In addition, Chancellor George Osborne is under pressure to over-rule Mr Huhne and halt the rush to green energy in a bid to protect British industry.

Price rises: Gas bills are set to increase by 80 to 90 by 2020 regardless of any Government intervention

The fear is that manufacturers and other businesses will be saddled with huge levies on energy bills, pushing up costs and threatening their ability to sell goods around the world. The details were revealed in the small print in DECC documents. The current average annual energy bill is around 1,200. DECC said the figure would be 1,379 by 2020 without any government measures to drive a switch to green and nuclear power. It claimed the figure would be 1,285 based on the impact of its green taxes and associated policies to cut household energy use and curb wholesale prices.

However, a DECC source admitted this lower figure would be possible only if households slashed electricity use by a third (from 4.5 to 3 megawatt hours a year) and gas by 6 per cent. The Government has a target of providing 20 per cent of the UKs electricity from renewable sources by 2020. Despite the 280 price tag of government policies, Mr Huhne insisted rising fossil fuel prices rather than green taxes were to blame for higher energy bills.

He said: I want to insulate Britains homes not just from the cold weather, but also from the chill winds of global fossil fuel prices. Its these that are pushing up consumer energy prices. We will secure our energy at the lowest cost: in the short term by promoting competition; in the medium term by insulating our homes and in the long term by steering us away from excessive reliance on fossil fuels and on to clean, green and secure energy. But Dr Benny Peiser, of the Global Warming Foundation, said Mr Huhnes reassurances were political spin.

Political spin: Dr Benny Peiser said that the statement that bills will fall was based on guesswork rather than any sound economic facts

All analysis by City banks and others make clear that current government policy will lead to big increases in energy bills, he said. The energy-use reductions being assumed by the Government to justify the claim that bills will fall are not based on any sound economic facts. They are pure guesswork. Government policy is based on an assumption that gas prices will continue to rise, but Dr Peiser said the price could fall. He said: Prices are likely to come down very significantly, perhaps by 30 to 40 per cent if the UK Government gives the green light to shale gas exploration. The UK is sitting on a gold mine of shale gas. Energy industry expert Joe Malinowski, of TheEnergyShop.com, said he was deeply sceptical about Mr Huhnes claims of lower bills. The CBI is particularly fearful of the impact of green taxes. Chief policy director Katja Hall said: Energy intensive industries underpin the UKs manufacturing sector, making products as diverse as the steel and chemicals needed for wind turbines and low-rolling resistance tyres.

The Government is in serious danger of throwing out the baby with the bathwater if it continues to pile new costs on to industries. The Government plans to spend 11billion installing smart meters in every property, saying that once people see how much energy they use, they will make cutbacks. Ministers say energy use will also be reduced by the so-called Green Deal, which will allow people to install double-glazing and loft insulation at no upfront cost. But a spokesman for consumer group Which? said: If take-up is lower than expected, energy bills will be pushed up even further.

Green Extreme
by AK Haart This is the Amazon Product Description for Deep Green Resistance, a book by Derrick Jensen, Lierre Keith and Aric McBay. Ill admit now that I began reading out of curiosity, it but couldnt get past the first few pages. With Climategate 2 still unfolding, its worth reminding ourselves of the extremes to which the politics of Green coercion can lead. For years, Derrick Jensen has asked his audiences, Do you think this culture will undergo a voluntary transformation to a sane and sustainable way of life? No one ever says yes. Deep Green Resistance starts where the environmental movement leaves off: industrial civilization is incompatible with life. Technology cant fix it, and shopping no matter how green wont stop it. To save this planet, we need a serious resistance movement that can bring down the industrial economy. Deep Green Resistance evaluates strategic options for resistance, from nonviolence to guerrilla warfare, and the conditions required for those options to be successful. It provides an exploration of organizational structures, recruitment, security, and target selection for both aboveground and underground action. Deep Green Resistance also discusses a culture of resistance and the crucial support role that it can play. Deep Green Resistance is a plan of action for anyone determined to fight for this planet and win.

Children left to freeze in the classrooms after head turns off heating on coldest day of year 'to show how school can be eco-friendly'
By Daily Mail Reporter Last updated at 9:09 AM on 8th December 2011

Angered parents: Headmaster Rob Benzie shut off the heating at Ansford Academy in Somerset on the coldest day of the year

Furious parents vented their anger at a headteacher who turned off his school's heating on one of the coldest days of the year. Pupils at Ansford Academy in Castle Cary, Somerset, were forced to grip their pens through thick gloves and wear their coats and hats in class as temperatures dropped to 1C. The school's headmaster, Rob Benzie, shut down the radiators as an experiment to show students how the school could cut its carbon footprint. But staff and parents condemned the plan, branding it 'barbaric' and 'beyond stupid'. One teacher said: 'It was absolutely ridiculous I have never experienced working in such cold conditions. 'I am all for saving the environment but to conduct an "experiment" as the head calls it on such a cold day is beyond stupid. 'The kids were complaining, no one was working properly some of them could not even write because they could not grip a pen through woolly gloves.

'We have a number of pupils with mental and physical disabilities here and they really struggled with the cold. 'It was unnecessary and in my opinion barbaric.' Temperatures dropped as low as one degree Celsius in Castle Carey last Friday the coldest of the winter so far. It was the first 'eco day' at the 640-pupil school, which caters for 11-16 year olds. A mother, whose 12-year-old daughter goes to the school, said: 'My daughter was physically shaking when she came home. 'When I heard about this eco day I was absolutely furious. 'I wanted to take my daughter out of school but I was worried I'd get into trouble with the authorities.'

Ansford Academy, pictured, in Castle Cary, Somerset, has 640 pupils aged 11-16, some of which have mental or physical disabilities

One father said: 'I was just shocked when I found out what had happened. 'I have never heard of such a ridiculous idea. Turning off all the heating in December is just mental. 'The kids could get sick I can't believe any of them learnt anything.

'I know when I am cold I can hardly function. I'm absolutely furious with the school.' But headteacher Mr Benzie, 52, defended the day, saying it was 'a success.' 'We turned off the heating as an experiment to see if we can lower our carbon footprint,' he said. 'We allowed pupils to wear as many jumpers as they liked and everyone seemed to be happy enough although it did get pretty chilly. 'We gave letters to pupils to take home to their parents informing them about the eco day. 'We only had one complaint and that came from a member of staff but they just got on with it in the end.' Mr Benzie said he hoped to repeat the eco day again next term. 'I considered the day a success, said. 'In fact I believe we have too much heating. 'On occasions I have had to turn it down as too much heat can make the students fall asleep. 'The idea was actually thought up by a small group of pupils from our student eco-group. 'I would like to make eco day a regular event.' The school was built in 1940 and became an academy in July this year. Mr Benzie has run the school since 2001 and achieved 85 per cent in A to C grades in this year's GCSE results.

Why we should be concerned about the Georgia Guidestones

by churchmouse When the Georgia Guidestones first appeared in the news in 1980, I was at university: Elbert County owns the Georgia Guidestones site. According to the Georgia Mountain Travel Associations detailed history: The Georgia Guidestones are located on the farm of Mildred and Wayne Mullenix[3] The Elbert County land registration system shows what appears to be the Guidestones as County land purchased on October 1, 1979. [4][5]

The monument was unveiled in March 1980, with the presence of 100 people.[6] Another account specifies March 22, 1980 and said 400 people attended.[2]

My friends and I discussed it in the dining hall. One said, Its really evil all about population control. I, on the other hand, found the messages quite intriguing and perfect for the end of the 20th century. Our group had a dinnertime discussion about the morality and ethics behind the ten guides for a New Age of Reason (image at left courtesy of Wikipedia): 1. Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature. 2. Guide reproduction wisely improving fitness and diversity. 3. Unite humanity with a living new language. 4. Rule passion faith tradition and all things with tempered reason. 5. Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts. 6. Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court. 7. Avoid petty laws and useless officials. 8. Balance personal rights with social duties. 9. Prize truth beauty love seeking harmony with the infinite. 10. Be not a cancer on the earth Leave room for nature Leave room for nature. I accused my friend of not having bothered reading past the first point, to which she said, A world court would be really problematic. It would be like the UN. This is the United States of America! We dont need world courts! In her Midwestern state, many people outside the larger towns and cities were deeply suspicious of the United Nations. It was not unusual for someone in that part of the world to pay in perpetuity for a billboard in the countryside that said Get US out of the UN! At that time, the only people who thought like that had read books by the John Birch Society or heard their ideas discussed by friends or family. So, I ignored what she had to say and forgot all about the Georgia Guidestones. Everyone else in our group was more anti- than pro-, by the way.

Over the past couple of years, however, I started reading about them again online. My occasional correspondent, Rogue Lutheran, sent me a few links to peruse in 2010, which got me going. Thirty years on, after having reread the ten guides and the articles, I now think that the whole concept and content are rather depressing. So, my sincere apologies to Rogue Lutheran for not having written on them earlier. It turns out that we still dont know who paid for this humanist monument de nos jours, although speculation abounds. The only thing we know is that its sponsors are or were A small group of Americans who seek the Age of Reason. The author of this multilingual message is one R C Christian, which is a pseudonym. The word is misspelled on the stone as pseudonyn. I bet whoever commissioned it is rather annoyed about that. Those who are familiar with esoteric (gnostic) societies surmise that R C Christian is a person (or persons) involved in Rosicrucianism, which used to be advertised in the back of Sunday newspaper supplements. They also call for a global religion, world courts, and for population levels to be maintained at around 500 million, over a 5.5 billion reduction from current levels. The stones infer that humans are a cancer upon the earth and should be culled in order to maintain balance with nature.[8] Throughout the 1970s, overpopulation, the biosphere (as it was called then) and pollution were big news. The word ecologist went mainstream at that time. These were experts, dont you know, and I took what they had to say seriously. Guest editorials in newspapers and cover articles in newsweeklies covered these subjects regularly. Back then, our society was much freer and much more given in my opinion to conspicuous consumption. Maybe it was just newer then; it was certainly cheaper. People also seemed happier, although not as happy as they were in the 1960s. However, we had fewer laws then, although the clamour for more regulation of industry was increasing. Now that we are in the 21st century, we have more laws not only for businesses but also many of a personal nature more than we even know about. It seems to me, that regardless of who devised the ten guides, we are being forced into them. Even OccupyZine the magazine of the Occupy movement has called them to its adherents attention. The OccupyZine link directs readers to an article published by the Vigilant Citizen in 2010 called Sinister Sites: The Georgia Guidestones. Vigilant Citizen (VC) writes: As you can see, the guidelines call for a drastic reduction of the world population, the adoption of new a world language, the creation of a world court and a vague allusions to eugenics. In other words, a blueprint for a New World Order. The first commandment is particularly shocking, since it basically stipulates that 12 out of 13 people on Earth should not exist; basically, that would mean everybody in the world would disappear except half of India. If todays world population is 6,7 billion, then that is a 92.54%

surplus. To consider these figures is mind-boggling. But then, how many people survived in the movie 2012? Not many. Who were they? The earths wealthiest people. Is this predictive programming? The last rule of the Guidestones, Be not a cancer on the earth leave room for nature leave room for nature is particularly disturbing as it compares human life to cancer on earth. With this state of mind, it is easy to rationalize the extinction of nearly all of the worlds population. VC also notes: The second rule (Guide reproduction wisely improving diversity and fitness) basically calls for the inference of lawmakers into the management of family units. If we read between the lines, it requires to creation of laws structuring the number of children per family. Furthermore, improving diversity and fitness can be obtained with selective breeding or the sterilization of undesirable members of society. This used to be called eugenics, until it became politically incorrect because of the Nazis. VC has read the Georgia Guidestones Guidebook and provides several helpful quotations from it which promote the idea of a world government and world courts. In their own words, the authors have chosen to stay anonymous in order to avoid debate and contention which might confuse our meaning, and which might delay a considered review of our thoughts. We believe that our precepts are sound. They must stand on their own merits Fair enough. But they also are in favour of A diverse and prosperous world population in perpetual balance with global resources will be the cornerstone for a rational world order. People of good will in all nations must work to establish that balance With the completion of the central cluster of The Georgia Guidestones our small sponsoring group has disbanded. We leave the monument in the safekeeping of the people of Elbert County, Georgia. If our inscribed words are dimmed by the wear of wind and sun and time, we ask that you will cut them deeper. If the stones should fall, or if they be scattered by people of little understanding. we ask that you will raise them up again. Ugh. We have enough laws controlling our own behaviour as it is. I predict that the exponential increase in laws regulating personal conduct will be the theme which history shows as characteristic of the first two decades of the 21st century. VC explains that R C Christian (emphases in the original): is a clear reference to Christian Rosenkreuz whose English name is Christian Rose Cross, the legendary founder of the Rosicrucian Order. Some might say that the resemblance between R.C. Christian and Christian Rose Cross is the result of an odd coincidence. As we will see, it is however only one of the MANY references to Rosicrucianism associated with the monument. This is only one piece of the puzzle, but an important piece nonetheless.

Rosenkreuz (1378 1484) was kidnapped as a five-year old by an Albigensian and raised in one of their monasteries. Therefore, he fell under the Bogomilist spell with the Albigenses in the south of France. Bogomilism is a heresy which is again picking up in popularity. VC has also picked up on the loss of personal liberties and freedom: Reading between the lines, the Guidestones require from the masses the loss of many personal liberties and to submit to heightened governmental control on many social issues not to mention the death of 92.5% of the populationand probably not those of the elite. Is the concept of a democracy by and for the people, as idealized by the Founding Fathers a mere illusion, a temporary solution until the introduction of socialist world government? Why are the worlds citizens not being consulted in a democratic matter? I guess it is easier for the elites to manufacture consent through mass medias. But maybe it wont work on everybody Someone defaced one of the tablets in 2008, but the stones must be pretty securely placed to have survived intact outside of a few chips up to now. It seems that this would be a good subject for Sunday School ethics classes for those in secondary school. If youre reading this and happen to teach a class of youngsters, it would make a good lesson or two on discernment. One of the links Rogue Lutheran sent me is from Vans Hardware Journal. Dont be dissuaded by the name of the blog; this post, Decoding the Georgia Guidestones, tells the local story. As mentioned earlier, no one is sure of the identity of R C Christian, however, there are even a few local Elberton possibilities, including someone who closely followed Alice A Baileys Theosophist teachings, which she and her husband turned into the Lucifer Publishing Company in 1920. It is now Lucis Trust and well known for its New Age publications. The Baileys Lucis Trust and their Arcane School, Van tells us (emphases mine): have become very influential organizations and appear to be favored as the blueprint for a United Nations endorsed world religion. A central theme in this Theosophical lineage is the idea that man can attain divinity. As such, God becomes the jealous adversary working to thwart mans elevation to godhood. Satan, or, more commonly in modern occult circles, Lucifer is seen as mans ally, the Bringer of Light, the Bestower of Knowledge. Therefore, it is a blend of Pelagianism mans divinity with satanic ideas and gnosticism, or secret knowledge. Vans Hardware Journal explains a possible Guidestones scenario for the unfortunate masses well worth using if you ever teach this subject: Through a state run eugenics program, Christian believes the world can produce healthier and more productive human beings over each succeeding generation. Superior human intelligence, compassion and drive and other desirable mental and physical qualities can also be enhanced under such eugenic conditions. Humorously yet sinisterly, Christian cites docility and loyalty achieved through selective breeding in dogs as evidence that comparable but more important modifications in human behavior can be achieved through eugenics.

In R.C. Christians Age of Reason, even if the state allows you to have children, you will be required to raise them under strict conditions so as to mold their characters and to develop their potentials as socially worthwhile adults. That is, if the state even allows you to keep them. Because even if you and your spouse are considered good breeding stock, the state might find you temperamentally unsuited for parenthood. In which case, your children will be transferred to the care of others capable of nurturing them into well adjusted adulthood And dont think that you are safe just because you lined up for voluntary sterilization. For instance, if the economy is bad and you lose your job, in Robert Christians rational world order, you will have to become a slave of the state to survive. You wont be able to vote and you will be compelled to work jobs often held by illegal immigrants, who will then be displaced back to their native lands. If you dont like your job and quit, you will starve. Not only will you have to be suitably employed or own a private business to vote, you will also have to pass both intelligence and educational requirements tests to prove to the state that you are worthy of the right of suffrage. Want to run for public office? Robert Christian has more tests that you will need to pass first. Speaking of rights, you will have none if Christian gets his way. Rights to him are privileges that the state will only bestow upon you if you properly serve the state. And dont forget your identity card! In Christians nightmare world, everyone is required to carry with them a unique biometric ID card. Without one you will not be able to get work or get government help. Okay, so you are a good citizen in Christians new age world. You might be allowed to have children. You might be allowed to raise them. You might be lucky enough to find a suitable job so that you can vote. Just be sure not to get sick or injured, because Christian believes the state must ration health care favoring those individuals whose continuing lives are most valuable to the state. But you were injured because your new Halliburton electric toothbrush exploded in your right hand, blowing it off at the wrist and blinding you for life. Surely, you have recourse to litigation. No, Christian wants to place caps on litigation and let financial damage beyond this limit fall to his states wonderfully efficient and fair health and welfare system. Unfortunately, that means that since you can no longer work, you will lose your voting privileges, almost certainly lose your child because you will not be able to care for him properly on welfare and you will receive the lowest standard of medical care available because you are no longer productive for the state. Its all very rational and reasonable in Christians mind. Yet, I run across a number of commenters on British and American blogs who also (sadly) would find this all perfectly reasonable. What does the Bible say about each of these ten guides of our time?

Short answer: obey the Ten Commandments and one will have no need for the ten guides.

Eco-eugenics
by Bishop Hill The latest piece of insanity to emerge from the global warming movement is a paper by S. Matthew Liao, a professor at New York University. His idea is that we should be engineering the human race to be less resource intensive: In this paper, we consider a new kind of solution to climate change, what we call human engineering, which involves biomedical modifications of humans so that they can mitigate and/or adapt to climate change. We argue that human engineering is potentially less risky than geoengineering and that it could help behavioural and market solutions succeed in mitigating climate change. We also consider some possible ethical concerns regarding human engineering such as its safety, the implications of human engineering for our children and for the society, and we argue that these concerns can be addressed. Our upshot is that human engineering deserves further consideration in the debate about climate change. There is a long interview with Liao in the Atlantic, in which he argues that his ideas are libertyenhancing, since the alternative is a compulsory limit to family sizes. Mar 13, 2012 at 11:29 AM | Ben Pile If you're wondering where these ideas come from, it is worth looking into the institutions that the authors of these 'researchers' work with. I have a post about my first impressions of the Liao paper at http://www.climate-resistance.org/2012/02/engineering-humans.html - i.e. I had not yet read it. The authors of the paper work out of the Oxford Martin School Future of Humanity Institute. The OMS say: The Oxford Martin School was founded as the James Martin 21st Century School at the University of Oxford in 2005 through the vision and generosity of Dr James Martin. It is a unique interdisciplinary research initiative tackling global future challenges. Our mission: to foster innovative thinking, interdisciplinary scholarship and collaborative activity to address the most pressing risks and realise important new opportunities of the 21st century. There are two main focuses for our work: Research - supporting forward-looking and interdisciplinary research to address 21st century challenges and opportunities. Impact - fostering impact-oriented initiatives and facilitating public engagement that will influence policy and effect positive change on a global scale. Clearly this is not an academic department established merely to study things, but to be a 'policyrelevant' research outfit. Defining the 'challenges faced by humanity' is in reality about finding ground on which to legitimise political institutions.

This is why work like this is extremely revealing. Some might claim (indeed they are) that this is just the work of three, slightly wacky researchers in some fusty old department. But actually it reveals something about the predominant 'ideology' of the political establishment. Which is not to say that Liao's paper will be taken up enthusiastically by our Dear Leaders, but that the paper (as does a lot of stuff from the OMS) reveals a somewhat degraded understanding of humanity and of individual autonomy. More broadly speaking, this is the reason why 'researchers', on behalf of policy-makers, go looking for portents of doom. The real object of their anxiety is, I would suggest, much closer to home. The phrase that gets trotted out occasionally, following criticism of the UNFCCC/IPCC processes is that 'global problems need global solutions'. Unfortunately for that somewhat empty claim, the reverse is necessarily true (and it is more true: global solutions need global problems. The OMS (but let's not single them out) want to 'influence policy and effect positive change on a global scale'. Their desire for this influence precedes their search. Looking for 'issues' which 'define humanities future' is a search for authority.

Human engineering to combat climate change?

by Reiner Grundmann There is a forthcoming article in Ethics, Policy and the Environment which proposes to consider human engineering, alongside other tools, in order to reduce our impact on the climate. The authors, Liao, Sandberg and Roache (LSR) write, "It involves the biomedical modification of humans to make them better at mitigating climate change."

Among the proposed methods are: - Pharmacological meat intolerance - Making humans smaller - Lowering birth-rates through cognitive enhancement - Pharmacological enhancement of altruism and empathy In a way, LSR recognize the fundamental problem of the challenge posed by climate change. Unlike other problems, such as malaria or AIDS, here we do not have technologies that can be applied to remedy a problem. This has been convincingly argued in a Nature piece by Nelson and Sarewitz. So what LSR suggest is to find equivalent medical technologies to find a solution to an intractable problem. To avoid misunderstanding: I find the human engineering proposal outlandish and hope it will be either forgotten or forcefully rejected. But I am not optimistic in this regard as the argument takes advantage of a slippery slope which has been established through all sorts of human enhancement procedures which people have voluntarily adopted. It highlights the problem outlined by Nelson and Sarewitz and gives it a new twist. Just as we had a discussion about utopias here on Klimawiebel, enter yet another dystopian proposal!

The radicals who rage against Tory austerity called for austerity themselves five years ago. Hypocritical much?

By Brendan O'Neill Politics Last updated: March 15th, 2013

George Monbiot

You know what? The surge in radical agitation against austerity would be far more convincing if these self-same agitators hadnt spent much of the past decade demanding austerity. These days it seems everyone is against austerity. You cant open a newspaper without seeing a tear-stained complaint about the awfulness of that A-word, while up and down the country Leftish campaigners are organising demos against Tory belt-tightening. Which is weird because, not five years ago, before the recession really started biting, it was de rigueur in these same radical circles to hold austerity up as the solution to everything, particularly to mankinds greediness and his garish materialism and his planet-destroying tendencies. To describe this shift among radicals from loving austerity to hating it as hypocrisy would be to do a disservice to hypocrites. It is something closer to political schizophrenia. The austerity about-facers are everywhere. Consider George Monbiot. These days he rails against austerity, especially of the Tory variety, saying it has extended the crisis and hurt ordinary people by propelling Britain into a double-dip recession. But wait I thought he loved the idea of recession? In 2007 he wrote an article called Bring on the recession, in which he argued that, as unpleasant as it will be, and yes, some people [will] lose their jobs and homes, a recession might at least help prevent ecological disaster by reining in pesky, polluting economic growth. Back then, in his book Heat, which was lapped up by Leftists and praised to the hilt by that Queen of the Left, Naomi Klein, Monbiot proudly said radical environmentalism was a campaign not for abundance but for austerity. Got that? For austerity. He said that where the dumb, consumption-hooked masses have a tendency to riot because they want more, not less, it was incumbent upon enlightened radicals to riot for less and even to riot for austerity. Once again, for austerity. Inspired by his weird words, some Greens set up a group called Riot 4 Austerity, which called for a 90 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, which, if it had ever come to pass, would have had a stunningly detrimental impact on peoples living standards. Monbiot isnt the only one who has gone from demanding riots for austerity to criticising Tory austerity. The disgraced Independent columnist Johann Hari ridiculed David Camerons proposed austerity

measures in 2010, saying these cuts will kill, not cure. Yet just two years earlier, in early 2008, he was calling on the then Labour government to introduce a system of wartime-style rationing in order to force us all to shift towards cleaner behaviour. Force what a lovely word. Just as the government in the Second World War did not ask people to eat less voluntarily, governments today cannot ask us to burn fewer greenhouse gases voluntarily, he said. In the space of two years, he went from demanding warlike austerity to make greedy people learn to live with less to lambasting Cameron for daring to impose cuts on peoples living standards. I wish these observers would make up their minds. Do they want recession, or hate recession? Love austerity, or loathe it? Do they want to force people to live like paupers or not? Pro-austerity was all the rage among radicals pre-2008. I still remember a 2006 March Against Climate Change, the most depressing demo Ive ever been on, at which a mishmash of middle-class mums, concerned commentators and old Leftists demanded greater restrictions on peoples holidaymaking and consumerist habits, all in the name of saving the planet. Meanwhile, in Left academic circles in the 1990s and 2000s it became achingly fashionable to depict economic growth as a curse, something which caused not only environmental destruction but also unhappiness and mental illness. Books such as The Selfish Capitalist: Origins of Affluenza, by Oliver James, and Enough: Breaking Free from the World of More, by John Naish, tapped into a radical zeitgeist which said that wanting more material things was vulgar and destructive, and the planet would be better off if people would stop being so greedy and grasping. There was a tsunami of newspaper and magazine articles on the scourge of material desire and how material success has brought us to a strange spiritual and moral bankruptcy. Back then, it was bad to be for economic growth and right-on to be austere, or at least eco-thrifty. The problem is that the Left responded to Thatcher and her promotion of the virtues of material desire not by saying, Okay, yes, material things are good, but your government wont deliver them, but rather by calling into question the whole idea of materialism, the desire for more wealth, what Owen Jones sniffily refers to in his book Chavs as working-class peoples [aspiration] to own more material things. They threw the baby out with the bathwater. They demonised growth and idolised restraint. They injected a logic of austerity into the very veins of radical thought and public debate more broadly, where happiness came to be equated with poverty, and sadness was said to spring from material success. Which means that, today, their Johnny Come Lately critiques of Tory austerity don't only sound hollow they sound insane.

Bring on the recession?

by Snowdon

Brendon O'Neill is in the Telegraph reminding the bien pensants of the left about their guilty little secretthat the 'austerity' they bemoan is exactly what they were demanding a few years ago. Brendan has written about thisbefore, as I have in The Spirit Level Delusion, but the hypocrisy of these misanthropes can't be pointed out often enough. Indeed, as Brendan says... To describe this shift among radicals from loving austerity to hating it as hypocrisy would be to do a disservice to hypocrites. It is something closer to political schizophrenia.

Brendan mentions some of the most notorious offenders, including Monbiot and his semilegendary 'Bring on the Recession' op-ed of 2007: These days he rails against austerity, especially of the Tory variety, saying it has extended the crisis and hurt ordinary people by propelling Britain into a double -dip recession. But wait I thought he loved the idea of recession? In 2007 he wrote an article called Bring on the recession, in which he argued that, as unpleasant as it will be, and yes, some people [will] lose their jobs and homes, a recession might at least help prevent ecological disaster by reining in pesky, polluting economic growth. And then there is Johann Hari, who stopped vandalising his enemies' Wikipedia pages for long enough in 2008 to glorify the end of economic growth in the Independent... The disgraced Independent columnist Johann Hari ridiculed David Camerons proposed austerity measures in 2010, saying these cuts will kill, not cure. Yet just two years earlier, in early 2008, he was calling on the then Labour government to introduce a system of wartime-style rationing in order to force us all to shift towards cleaner behaviour. Force what a lovely word. Just as the government in the Second World War did not ask people to eat less voluntarily, governments today cannot ask us to burn fewer greenhouse gases voluntarily, he said. In the space of two years, he went from demanding war-like austerity to make greedy people learn to live with less to lambasting Cameron for daring to impose cuts on peoples living standards. For the sake of completeness, I'd like to offer some other examples. For instance, here is Hephzibah Anderson, writing in the Observer in February 2008.

Hurrah for the recession. It will do us a power of good ... Feeling poorer in pocket may not make us richer in spirit, but it could just help us get there. If we really are teetering on the brink of recession, technical or otherwise, it may remind us that houses are places to live - castles, perhaps, but not piggy banks. It may force us to recall the thrill of yearning for something, the more tantalising aspects of restraint, the delicious frisson of anticipation rather than the dull ache of satiation. Here is Tim Lott writing in the Independent in August of the same year. This article has so many layers of wrong that it deserves to be quoted at length. According to Lott, the recession was going to be the cure for pretty much everything... Bring on the pain of a recession and purge our coarsened souls ... Christopher Ruhm, the American economist, for instance, has published a study suggesting that a 1 per cent rise in unemployment reduced the death rate in the US by 0.5 per cent. Higher unemployment, he argues, can mean fewer cars on the road and thus fewer accidents. This also means less air pollution and a drop in pulmonary diseases and heart attacks. Also he suggests that during a slump it is the heaviest smokers, drinkers and the most obese who are likely to change their behaviour. Recession can lead to many other benefits a boom in public works for instance. With residential construction virtually stopped it's likely to get a lot cheaper to build things. One of the enduring legacies of America's Great Depression, for example, was the infrastructure: roads, bridges, dams, city halls, museums and parks. During recessions, governments get far more for their money, so embark on public works projects, which can also cut unemployment. This is much debated, but my feeling is that the environment may also benefit from a recession. People will want to cut their energy costs, therefore nonessential power consumption will drop by far more than any amount of liberal nagging would achieve. There will be pressure on the organic market, as Rose Prince discusses on page 54, but equally there will be less eating out (therefore less driving) and less meat eating (since it is more expensive). Holidays and therefore air travel will slump, curbing pollution. The rise in energy costs, one of the chief reasons for the recession, is liable to have a number of positive knock-on effects. The mall culture that has destroyed many of Britain's high streets is likely to erode in the face of the financial burden of a car journey that can offset many of the economic benefits of out-of-town superstores. High streets especially as rents begin to fall as businesses fail can start to regenerate with smaller, more individual shops. ... During the Eighties, for instance, it could be argued that the huge amount of youth unemployment led to a burgeoning of creativity. The inevitability and relative acceptability of being on the dole meant creative layabouts spent a lot of time doing reasonably creative things, and it helped fill the art schools and led to, among other things, the New Wave in music and, arguably, Brit Art. Perhaps a rise in youth unemployment again will lead to another creative upsurge.

There are a few more common sense benefits of a recession retail businesses will be offeringmore discounts and perks for a longer period to attract customers and visitors, for instance.Divorce rates are dropping, partly because people can't afford to split up. But the main benefit for me of a recession is not any of the above, but the inevitable change in values that is likely to occur. After all there is no doubt that the past 10 years has seen a exponential increase in vulgarity, greed and stupidity. And, of course, shopping, which encompasses all three. This kind of mentality was not confined to lefties. In the Sunday Times, India Knight said under the headline 'Aah, what a relief the boom has turned to bust'that I am happy to observe that the decades of vulgar excess are finally over." And Alexander Chancellor, writing in the Guardian, had the following thoughts...

A recession will be tough. But it might turn us into a friendlier - and even happier society

How so, Mr Chancellor? I remember during the 1980s how polite taxi drivers became, so eager were they to attract custom Good times! One of the effects of financial hardship is to make people care less about their waistlines or about anything else that is supposed to keep them trim and fit. They feel free to be themselves again.

Hurrah for the recession indeed. But for Chancellor, the real benefit of economic malaise is greater social cohesion and a return to traditional values... In a document leaked to the press this week, the Home Office warned the prime minister that the recession would mean more crime, more racism and more extremism. There may well be some risk of that, but it doesn't exclude a more general resurgence of a Britain admiringly described by John Major as one of "long shadows on cricket grounds, warm beer, invincible suburbs and, as George Orwell said, 'Old maids bicycling to holy communion through the morning mist.'" Perhaps "old maids bicycling to holy communion" is pushing it a bit, but hard times can have the effect of making society cosier and less competitive. It may be my imagination, but I think I can already feel in London a quieter, more amiable atmosphere, in which people are friendlier and less abusive than they were when times were good. Financial insecurity does improve people's manners, even if this is only out of selfinterest. I remember during the economic downturn of the 1980s how polite shopkeepers and even taxi drivers became, so eager were they to attract one's custom. We may find that this will happen again. Given that depressions are bound to be depressing in lots of ways, it helps to

remember that every cloud has a silver lining: and the silver lining in this case could be, for a short time at least, a somewhat more cohesive and even happier society. This kind of talk sounds pretty ridiculous five years on. It sounded pretty ridiculous at the time, truth be told (which is why I kept the clipping at the top of this blog post). In part, it can be attributed the demands of being a contrarian newspaper columnist with space to fill, but there is no doubt that there are many people in well-paid jobs who believe that poverty is noble and empowering. They have been quiet since the end of 2008 for reasons I discussed in The Spirit Level Delusion... When the full impact of the recession hit home a few months later, these columnists had the good sense to shut up about unemployment cleansing the soul for fear of being lynched by their readers. By the time The Spirit Level appeared on the shelves in March 2009, Britain was well into the longest recession since the 1930s. The anti-consumerists no longer had to fantasise about what a world without economic growth would look like. It would be nice to think that some of these miserablists have learnt a lesson from the era of alleged austerity, but I suspect that it will only take a few quarters of economic growth for the attacks on GDP to return.

An English class for trolls, professional offence-takers and climate activists

By James Delingpole Politics Last updated: April 7th, 2013

Not pictured: Monbiot, Flannery, Mann.

Should Michael Mann be given the electric chair for having concocted arguably the most risibly inept, misleading, cherry-picking, worthless and mendacious graph the Hockey Stick in the history of junk science? Should George Monbiot be hanged by the neck for his decade or so's hysterical promulgation of the great climate change scam and other idiocies too numerous to mention?

Should Tim Flannery be fed to the crocodiles for the role he has played in the fleecing of the Australian taxpayer and the diversion of scarce resources into pointless projects like all the eyewateringly expensive desalination plants built as a result of his doomy prognostications about water shortages caused by catastrophic anthropogenic global warming? It ought to go without saying that my answer to all these questions is *regretful sigh* no. First, as anyone remotely familiar with the zillion words I write every year on this blog and elsewhere, extreme authoritarianism and capital penalties just aren't my bag. Second, and perhaps more importantly, it would be counterproductive, ugly, excessive and deeply unsatisfying. The last thing I would want is for Monbiot, Mann, Flannery, Jones, Hansen and the rest of the Climate rogues' gallery to be granted the mercy of quick release. Publicly humiliated? Yes please. Having all their crappy books remaindered? Definitely. Dragged away from their taxpayer funded troughs and their cushy sinecures, to be replaced by people who actually know what they're talking about? For sure. But hanging? Hell no. Hanging is far too good for such ineffable toerags. This isn't to say that there isn't a strong case for the myriad dodgy scientists-on-the-make, green activists, posturing and ignorant politicians, rent-seeking corporatists, UN apparatchiks, EU technocrats and hopelessly out-of-their-depth environment correspondents who talked up the global warming scare to be brought to account for the vast damage they have done to the global economy, for the people they have caused to die in fuel poverty, for the needless regulations they have inflicted on us, for the landscapes they have ravaged with wind farms, and so on. Indeed, it would be nice to think one day that there would be a Climate Nuremberg. But please note, all you slower trolls beneath the bridge, that when I say Climate Nuremberg I use the phrase metaphorically. A metaphor, let me explain I can because I read English at Oxford, dontcha know is like a simile but stronger. So when, for example, a rugger team boasts in the shower room after a particularly brutal match that it "raped" the opposition, it doesn't literally mean that it had forcible sex with the other side even though that may be if you're incredibly thick and literalistic and looking for offence what it sounds like. Rather, what it means is that it destroyed the other team. But, hey, look there we go again. Another metaphor! See how rich and inventive our language is? We can use a word like "destroyed" in a sense that doesn't necessarily entail the complete eradication of 15 players in a rugger team. It can mean as in this case beaten soundly. Anyway, I mention all this by way of reference to a piece I wrote in The Australian, the other day. It was headlined "Deluged with Flannery and covered in Viner". It's well worth a read if you can negotiate the paywall. For those who don't want to, let me treat you for free to the final sentence. The climate alarmist industry has some very tough questions to answer: preferably in the defendants dock in a court of law, before a judge wearing a black cap. How do you hang an "industry", I wonder. How exactly do you put a rope round a dodgy computer model? Or a 13.7 million UEA climate research grant? Or an article in Guardian Environment pages called something like "How do you break it to your six-year old child that global warming is killing our planet and by the time he hits 21 the world will be a boiling soup of lava and dead puppies like on the Bedtime Stories advert"?

Seems to me that it's quite an impossibility. But there are others who don't, clearly, for the day after the Australian article ran I was gobsmacked to read on Twitter that a small cabal of weapons-grade pillocks from the further extremes of the eco loon movement had chosen to interpret this phrase as some kind of demand for "climate scientists" to be executed. When I say "gobsmacked" I do mean "gobsmacked."(That'll be another metaphor, btw. I haven't literally been smacked in the mouth). I was gobsmacked a) by the sheer bloody desperation. As I've indicated above, you really have to work hard to torture that phrase before it yields anything even a quarter-way offence-worthy b) by the unutterable hypocrisy. It's not people on my side of the debate who make "funny" propaganda films in which kids who don't believe in reducing carbon emissions are ho! ho! obliterated in a pink mist of gore at the touch of a button by one of the enlightened true believers. It's not people on my side of the argument who write sentences like this: "For this reason I propose that the death penalty is appropriate for influential GW deniers." [Note absence of metaphor, there. It's a bald statement entirely in accord with the rest of the article, rather than an afterthought] c) by the chutzpah and cynicism. Of course, you see a lot of these Alinskyite techniques from the left these days: feigned moral outrage and tactical offence-taking are a useful way of closing down the argument before you're forced to get into a debate which you're bound to lose on facts. But you never quite get used to them. I'm going to come back to this subject again because I think it's one of the deadliest threats to freedom in our era: what I call the Liberal War on Metaphor. (I think it will make a good future You Know It Makes Sense column in The Spectator). For the moment I want to conclude by saying this: the real menace is not the fairly small minority of hard left activists, whingeing Guardianistas, professional victims and bien-pensant ideologues who seek to silence freedom of speech by cynically creating moral equivalence between metaphorical violence and real violence. (cf also, for example, the way the US left tried to pin the blame for the Gabrielle Giffords shooting on the "inflammatory" rhetoric of people like Sarah Palin). Rather, the real menace are their useful idiots the ordinary, decent, reasonable people who dignify this low-down Alinskyite technique by according it a credence and mainstream respectability it simply doesn't deserve. Take Professor Richard Tol, a man for whom I have a degree of respect. Though he's definitely not on my side of the argument a man of the left who believes in carbon taxes and who isn't a climate sceptic he's nevertheless sufficiently objective and intellectually independent to have realised from the start that the Stern Report was bunk. For this he deserves eternal credit. The problem with the Tols of this world is that they are under a naive misapprehension about the climate change debate in particular and the culture wars debate generally. Being both decent, fairminded people and determined centrists they assume that there must be equal merit and equal fault on both sides of the argument. (What I call the dog poo yogurt fallacy). This leads them to categorical errors like Tol's on Twitter, where he decided he ought to wade into the debate by condemning that harmless concluding sentence of mine in The Australian piece. As if, somehow, there were moral and intellectual equivalence between say, Professor Richard Parncutt's crystal-clear call for climate deniers

to be executed (if they didn't recant) and my throwaway metaphor. Which, achingly obviously to most people with even half a brain, there is not. Sorry to have a go at poor Richard Tol. He's a damned useful economist, I'm sure, but he's evidently way out of his depth in areas which require seriously critical thinking. I note that warmists are often banging on about the fact that sceptics like Christopher Booker and myself "only" have arts degrees. But actually that's our strength, not our weakness. Our intellectual training qualifies us better than any scientist social or natural sciences for us to understand that this is, au fond, not a scientific debate but a cultural and rhetorical one. It's entirely characteristic of this debate that even the most aggressively antipathetical trolls could find no factual basis whatsoever for disputing my piece in the Australian (how could they: the facts are all on the sceptics' side); that the best they could do was a desperate cheap shot which required them deliberately to misunderstand a harmless metaphor. Our culture deserves better than to have the terms of debate dictated by malign, politically motivated, professional offence-takers. Let's stop surrendering and start fighting back.
Bruce Charlton's Miscellany by Bruce Charlton

Dishonesty reduces applied intelligence: the example of (Sir) David Attenborough

Further to this: http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/dishonesty-reduces-applied-intelligence.html Sir David Attenborough demonstrates that political correctness driven dishonesty causes actual reduction in applied intelligence: Attenborough outlines his belief that human beings have stopped evolving according to the principle of natural selection outlined by Charles Darwin. I think that weve stopped evolving. Because if natural selection, as proposed by Darwin, is the main mechanism of evolution there may be other things, but it does look as though thats the case then weve stopped natural selection. We stopped natural selection as soon as we started being able to rear 9599 per cent of our babies that are born. We are the only species to have put a halt to natural selection, of its own free will, as it were.

http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2013-09-09/david-attenborough-i-dont-ever-want-to-stopwork?ref=Article.RelatedNews Another account of this same interview has him saying: Attenborough, a long-time campaigner for reducing the global population, said that having large families these days is "irresponsible." China's one-child-per-family policy had produced "personal tragedies," he said, but had saved the Middle Kingdom from having several hundred million new mouths to feed. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/09/10/david_attenborough_warns_humans_have_stopped_evolving_ via_natural_selection/ *

Attenborough is the grand old man of British science broadcasters, supposedly a 'national treasure' yet he has been propagating politically correct lies about Anthropogenic Climate Change for a long time now, and it has clearly caused a very significant reduction in his applied intelligence. The above remarks reveal a fundamental inability to understand the basics of evolution by natural selection - this is such a big error that if I saw this kind of thing in an undergraduate essay (even in today's world of grade inflation) I would probably mark it down to about 45 percent (i.e. third class assuming there was plenty of correct stuff elsewhere to compensate). Since DA won a scholarship to Cambridge to study natural sciences as a young man, I must assume that he used to understand natural selection - and my inference is that habitual dishonesty has destroyed this understanding and so confused his mind that he cannot any longer reason in two steps. He does not notice that the decline of childhood mortality rates to near zero has shifted natural selection from resisting mortality to achieving fertility - and that China's 'one child per family' policy is itself natural selection - against the Chinese who adhere to the policy and in favour of anybody who does not. Unless, that is, Attenborough actually believes that all babies born everywhere are genetically identical or do not inherit characteristics relevant to fertility from their parents... but who knows what he believes, or imagines he believes...

How green bullying, junk science and EU lies killed off yet another successful industry
By James Delingpole Politics Last updated: November 7th, 2013

This is a story with everything: bees, junk science, the French behaving badly, the EU at its worst (H/T Richard North at EUreferendum).

You'll read it and go: "Yes! This is why I hate the EU. This is why it can never be reformed: because corruption and lies and horsetrading and an unaccountable bureaucracy of imperious apparatchiks and an inbuilt antipathy to business and free markets aren't unfortunate and rare byproducts of the system. They ARE the system." It follows on from something I wrote a few months ago about the campaign to ban neonicotinoids. I gave the piece the heading Bees, Pesticides and More Green Lies because that was the essence of the story. Green campaigners (aided and abetted by the usual celebrity rentamob) decided that the reason bee populations were suffering was because of a certain kind of pesticide in the neonicotinoid group which was causing their colonies to collapse. Never mind that neonicotinoids were, as North puts it, the fruits of years of development at a cost of millions, and vital to British agriculture; never mind that the evidence that they were causing bee deaths was small to nonexistent. The Greenies had them in their sights and there was an end to it: on went the bee costumes, up went the placards, out came Vivienne Westwood and Stephen Fry, and really, if the only place you got your information was the mainstream media that would have been all you would have ever heard of it. You'd have known simply because you did: it was a known fact that neonicotinoids were killing bees and had to be banned. Except a) it wasn't true and b) the story gets murkier and murkier. We now know that the EU ban on neonicotinoids in May this year was enacted not on the basis of any hard scientific evidence, but rather as a result of manoeuvrings by a socialist French ex-MEP named Stphane Le Foll. Le Foll it was who masterminded Franois Hollande's election campaign and who, on his subsequent appointment as Minister of Agriculture, sought to use a ban on neocotinoids as a way of both burnishing his green credentials and of currying favour with France's militant agricultural lobby and the (yes, the French have a union for everything) National Union of French Apiculture (UNAF). Among the victims of the subsequent ban was Cruiser OSR, a neonicotinoid pesticide often used on oil seed rape, despite there being no hard evidence that its active ingredient thiamethoxam was harmful to bees except in doses much higher than when it was used in the field. But though the ban was popular in France it left the French with a bit of problem, as North explains: French farmers would be at a distinct disadvantage with the rest of Europe if they were the only ones unable to use the pesticide. Syngenta estimated that they would lose 200m (161m) per season through lost yield and crop protection. Le Foll thus instructed his ministry to push for an EU-wide ban on all neonicotinoids, lobbying the European Commission and the EFSA. The EFSA is the European Food Safety Authority and was run at the time by one of Le Foll's compatriots, Director General Catherine Geslain-Lanelle. When Le Foll, under pressure from the French agricultural lobby, began agitating for a Europe-wide ban in order to level the playing field, he sought the EFSA's help in justifying his case for the ban. The EFSA responded with a report which was inconclusive and which made clear that there was no evidence that at least one kind of neonicotinoid thiamethoxam: the one used by Syngenta represented a risk to bees. However, the EFSA's press release presented a more exaggerated version of the case against neonicotinoids [Summary for Policymakers, anyone], insisting they should now only be used on "crops not attractive to honeybees." When Syngenta got sight of the press release before publication they were mortified. Their product was about to be banned on the basis of a blatant misrepresentation of the truth. A revised press release was prepared.

North takes up the story: But, according to internal documents obtained through EU public access regulations (Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001), French-born EFSA Director General Catherine GeslainLanelle had blocked the revised version. "No change needed in the [press release]", she wrote on the morning of the 16th. The error remained in the final version. So on the basis of no hard scientific evidence, a safe, effective, sophisticated pesticide of enormous use to farmers especially in Britain where oil-seed rape is an important crop was about to be banned on the basis of a dodgy press release. Among those who tried in vain to stop the ban was Secretary State for the Environment Owen Paterson, who argued for more and better scientific studies. But the ban was passed by majority vote all the same. Still, at least the story had a happy ending for Catherine Geslain-Lanelle who, having resigned her job at EFSA, took plum job working directly for Le Foll as Director General for agricultural, agrifood and territorial policies. What's particularly depressing about stories like this is that they are so rarely told. The details are too involved and, hey, who wants to take the side of a nasty big chemical company when it's up against caring greens and lovely, friendly, buzzy bees. But what about all the scientists who took such trouble to develop a pesticide with the express purpose of not harming wildlife? What about the millions spent developing it? What about the shareholders? What about the workers' families? What about the farmers and their lost revenues? All of them sacrificed because of a combination of green bullying, EU cynicism and the posturing of a Socialist French agriculture minister.

EU politics: neonicotinoids and the joys of isolation

Richard North, 06/11/2013

In an attempt to frighten us all into staying in the European Union, the CBI has been warning us of the perils of "isolation". It conveys in its recent report that the UK must use its influence in Europe, which we are told - "has helped maximise the openness of the EU". Well, that certainly was not the case when Secretary of State for the Environment, Owen Paterson, had last year to confront a potential ban on an important pesticide, the fruits of years of development at a cost of millions, and vital to British agriculture. A saga which was to see him exert all possible "influence" in the EU, leading to abject failure, was to start at the end of March 2012, when two studies were published in the American journal Science suggesting that a certain pesticide was having a devastating effect on bees. This was Cruiser OSR, developed by the Swiss chemical giant Syngenta, a pesticide from the neonicotinoid group based on an active substance known as thiametoxam. It was used very widely for treating oilseed rape seed and researchers were claiming that bees that had consumed nectar from treated seed, even in very low doses, showed disorientation and difficulties returning to their hives. Now, there seemed to be a possible explanation for a catastrophic decline in the bee population throughout Northern hemisphere. However, the studies were equivocal and, normally, would have only been of academic interest. But this was the French election year and there was less than a month to go before the first round of the French presidential election.

And in France, where the agricultural industry was still influential, with a strong artisan base, the numerically strong National Union of French Apiculture (UNAF) had already been campaigning against the use of Cruiser OSR. For agriculture minister Bruno Le Maire, who had personally approved the product in 2010, the findings were a hot potato. Already considered to be too close to corporate business, he was now fighting for his political life. Contemporary media records that he was having to fight off calls by UNAF and a coalition of Green groups network (France Nature Environnement - FNE) for an immediate ban. As a defensive move, he asked for reports from his own National Agency for the Safety of Food, Environment and Labour (ANSES), and the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). The reports were to be delivered by 31 May, after the election was safely in the bag. If the scientific findings were confirmed, Le Marie promised, marketing authorisation of Cruiser OSR would be removed before the next rape planting season in the autumn. UNAF was highly suspicious, charging that Le Marie was only acting because of the election not that it did him any good. As it turned out, Sarkozy's UMP was ejected. Le Maire was out of a job. In came Hollande's Socialist Party, and with it a new agriculture minister, former MEP Stphane Le Foll (pictured below), a politician committed to "resocialising rural territories in France". Installed on 16 May, ten days after Hollande had won the second round, Le Foll was a powerful player in the Socialist hierarchy, having been the new president's campaign organiser, masterminding his rise to power.

Now, this highly political animals was head of the agriculture ministry, and, with strong "green" credentials, was determined to "rethink agricultural project". President of the Groupe Saint Germain, he was a strong "climate change" campaigner and was determined to "reconnect" ecology and agriculture. To that end in July 2013, with Philippe Martin, Le Foll was to combine the ministries of agriculture and ecology. In office, he was to say that he did not believe in herbicides. "I challenge the very principle of the herbicide: we must organise the competition between plants to get the best", he said. This was the man then who was going to decide the fate of Cruiser OSR. Thus, to no one's surprise at all, on 1 June, in a remarkable press conference, he announced his intention to ban the product. To justify this move, he claimed the support of his own agency, ANSES and also EFSA. However, while Le Foll asserted that the pesticide was giving rise to an "adverse effect", affecting foraging success and survival in honey bees, critics noted that that finding relied on laboratory tests using doses of thiamethoxam at ten

times levels found in the field. Furthermore, neither ANSES nor EFSA actually confirmed the evidence of any adverse effect. In fact, ANSES noted that the high dose used in the laboratory tests had never been encountered in the field, so the Science papers were considered "not verified by the available evidence". EFSA said doses of neonicotinoids used in the research were above the highest residue levels recorded in plant nectar, adding that more studies were needed to evaluate exposure in different field situations. In was nevertheless a highly publicised event, Reuters noted that there would be a delay of two weeks, to allow the manufacturer Syngenta to submit evidence defending the use of their product. That evidence materialised on 15 June but it had no effect. Le Foll had already made up his mind. On 29 June, he formally withdrew the marketing authorisation from Cruiser OSR. The decision sent shockwaves throughout Europe, and especially in the UK, where oilseed rape is an important crop, and Cruiser an important plant protection product. Luke Gibbs, head of public affairs at Syngenta UK, was quick to reassure British growers that they would not be affected, but that was to reckon without the contagion, in which spread, the European Union was to play a fundamental part. To lock in the ban locally, Le Foll needed the support of the European Commission, especially as the possibility of the EU over-ruling the French ban would have devastating political consequences. Furthermore, while the ban was popular politically, French farmers would be at a distinct disadvantage with the rest of Europe if they were the only ones unable to use the pesticide. Syngenta estimated that they would lose 200m (161m) per season through lost yield and crop protection. Le Foll thus instructed his ministry to push for an EU-wide ban on all neonicotinoids, lobbying the European Commission and the EFSA. Back in June 2012, the Commission had no plans to proposing a member state restrictions on neonicotinoids, and was prepared to wait until EFSA reported its own assessment later in the year. The EFSA assessment actually came on 16 January with a press release which was to set the issue on fire. It said it was unable to finalise its risk assessments "due to shortcomings in the available data" but nevertheless concluded that, "only uses on crops not attractive to honey bees were considered acceptable". This was to be the death knell of Cruiser OSR and related products, as oilseed rape is regarded as attractive to honey bees. However, recently released documents show that the press release which is all most people would have seen misrepresented the EFSA report. Furthermore, from correspondence with the Agency and subsequent events, the misrepresentation appears to have been deliberate. As regards thiametoxam, the Agency had actually identified no significant risk to bees and the press release was going far beyond the terms of the report, and indeed the Agency's remit. It role supposed to be limited to reviewing the evidence, not to define the acceptability of risks that was the responsibility of the Commission and member states. With sight of the draft press release containing the misrepresentation, the day before its release, the manufacturer Syngenta had urgently called upon the Agency to correct it. In response, EFSA staff prepared a revised release.

But, according to internal documents recently obtained through EU public access regulations (Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001), French-born EFSA Director General Catherine Geslain-Lanelle (pictured above) had blocked the revised version. "No change needed in the [press release]", she wrote on the morning of the 16th. The error remained in the final version. After that, a Europe-wide ban was only a matter of time. A formal request was made by the Netherlands, asking the Commission to intervene, effectively citing the press release rather than the report. The Commission obliged on 31 January announcing its intention to suspend the market authorisation of the entire range of neonicotinoids for two years, pending further studies. Predictably, Le Foll issued a statement saying he "welcomed" the Commission's announcement, which was "in line" with his decision to withdraw the authorisation for Cruiser OSR in France. Two votes through the Council failed to reach a decision. On 29 April 2013, fifteen member states had supported the restriction, eight had voted against and four had abstained during the final vote, thus failing to muster a qualified majority. This allowed the Commission to invoke its right under the comitology procedure to make a decision, which was adopted on 24 May 2013. The UK, through its Secretary of State for the Environment, Owen Paterson, had been mounting a spirited defence, arguing for more and better scientific studies. But he was unable to prevail. Despite the total absence of scientific evidence to support the ban, the UK was forced to fall into line and prohibit the use of a valuable crop-protection product. But the story did not end there. This had not been the first time EFSA had been accused ofconflict of interest and, last July, EFSA Director-General Catherine Geslain-Lanelle resignedand took a plum job working directly for Le Foll as Director General for agricultural, agri-food and territorial policies.

Having personally played her part in protecting her new boss's back, ensuring that a local, politicallymotivated ban did not disadvantage French farmers and become a political embarrassment, she was being appropriately rewarded. Thus does British industry suffer from its membership of the European Union. On the other hand, "isolation" would enable it to protect itself from Continental electoral manoeuvring, and the contagion of European politics played out on the Brussels stage. Mutual recognition of market authorisation arrangements would allow the UK to take a full part in the Single Market for crop protection products, yet insulate us from the damaging political infighting that we currently

have to suffer. As with infectious disease, managed isolation is actually a good thing when needed to protect the national interest, something we could enjoy if we ignore the CBI and leave the EU.

Do climate sceptics really deserve to be executed because of Typhoon Haiyan?

By James Delingpole Environment Last updated: November 14th, 2013

(Pic AFP) While I was away being Radley's Provocateur-in-Residence (yes, it went very well, thank you) someone calling himself Sai Gon Seamus (an expatriate Irishman living in Vietnam, I'm guessing) Tweeted this at me: @JamesDelingpole Hey scumbag, just remember they hanged Lord Haw Haw. #Haiyan If it hadn't been for the hashtag, this would have puzzled me greatly. But I think I can roughly guess what he's struggling to articulate. He's saying: "As an evil climate change denier you are as bad as a Nazi propagandist. Just as William Joyce was hanged for his complicity with a regime responsible for so many deaths, so you deserve to die because of your partial responsibility for delaying the urgent action that might have prevented the occurrence of Typhoon Haiyan in which thousands needlessly died." Something like that, anyway. Well it goes almost without saying that the man is a prat. And a rather menacing, unpleasantsounding, mentally unstable prat as that. But, unfortunately, it's not just the out-and-out nutcases who have been pushing the Typhoon Haiyan = Another Deadly Sign Of Man-Made Climate Change line. Here, for example, is the BBC's Roger Harrabin having a go. Here's another arch-alarmist Jeff Sachs of the Columbia Earth Institute trying it on. Here's some desperate bloke from the Mirror having a pop.

And here's the head of Filipino delegation at the Warsaw climate conference who set the ball rolling with his emotive, tearful plea for action, ending in the claim "We can stop this madness. Right now, right here." Well the response of the Filipino delegate you can understand and forgive: a) his family comes from the worst hit area of the Philippines; b) he's a greenie delegate at a greenie climate conference so he's bound to view any extreme weather event in a doctrinaire way c) it's his job, damn it. One of the things we've seen consistently throughout all the recent COP conferences is delegates from the developing world using "climate change" as a stick with which to beat and more pertinently try to extract more aid-money from the rich Western nations. And it's not just evil right-wingers like me who've noticed c). So too, even, have deep green cardcarrying lefties like the Obama administration,which is revealed in the Guardian today to be very worried about the possibility that the US will end up having to fork out for all the damage ostensibly done to the Third World by allegedly man-made climate change. Gosh why does the phrase "hoist by your own petard" spring so satisfyingly to mind? So anyway, yes, you can forgive the Filipino delegate for spouting all that tearful, emotive drivel. But the other people I've quoted? No. I don't think so. What's interesting when you read their claims is that none of them is capable of producing any credible scientific evidence that "climate change" has anything whatsoever to do with Typhoon Haiyan. That'll be because as Benny Peiser notes in the Spectator the science says no such thing. Even the not-exactly unalarmist IPCC is in agreement on this one. Here's what it says in its new report: Current datasets indicate no significant observed trends in global tropical cyclone frequency over the past century No robust trends in annual numbers of tropical storms, hurricanes and major hurricanes counts have been identified over the past 100 years in the North Atlantic basin In summary, confidence in large scale changes in the intensity of extreme extratropical cyclones since 1900 is low. (H/T GWPF) What we saw in all these articles, in other words, was the comical spectacle of alarmists tying themselves in knots as they attempted desperately to explain how even though "the science" clearly shows no link whatsoever between the Philippines typhoon and "climate change" it nevertheless is sort of because well it just is Look, I'm sorry guys but this really won't do. If you're going to write alarmist articles reverently invoking your favourite sciencey science experts to show how totally the science supports your claims about the dread threat of man-made global warming, you can't suddenly junk your key evidence sources when they contradict what it is you'd like them to say. Well, you can: everyone has the right to make an unutterable prat of himself in print. But it doesn't do much for your credibility, let's put it that way. Meanwhile, here in the real world, the people have had enough. How good it was to see 50,000 Poles rallying in Warsaw earlier this week against the UN's oppressive climate policies. Being practical people with plenty of experience over the last seventy years or so of fighting tyranny they're simply not interested in having their cost of living driven up by faceless apparatchiks in the name of dealing with a non-existent problem. But that isn't, of course, a point that would ever be understood by the no doubt mostly well-meaning pillocks who've spent this week trying to use Typhoon Haiyan as an excuse to justify more

concerted global action to "combat climate change." I suspect they genuinely imagine, in their sad delusional way, that theirs is not only the morally right position but also a cost-neutral one. Prats, I say again. Prats!