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Cleanse your tortured psyche of the stain of enviro-guilt for as little as $9.95 per year!
UPDATE. The Age reports:
Hard-core global warming sceptics will descend on Canberra today for the release of a book claiming environmentalism is the new religion …
The book claims climate change is nothing new and declares Howard Government investments in solar power and in cleaning up coal a “complete waste of taxpayers’ money”.
Heretics! Burn them!
I’ve been thinking about this whole carbon credits idea and have decided that, since people in the Coalition countries have made well over 600,000 babies since 2003, we can stop paying any attention to that Lancet study.
Posted by Paul Zrimsek on 2007 02 27 at 09:51 PM • permalinkiowahawk has obviously been eradicated by the Vast Gore Machine… link needed.
Posted by Infidel Tiger on 2007 02 27 at 09:52 PM • permalinkThis is just a clever marketing tool to get the masses excited about a new mystery product that will allow us to expunge the guilt from our souls 100% risk-free, isn’t it? Well, it’s working like a charm. Whatever it is, I need one RIGHT NOW - hook me up!
Posted by Blue State Sil on 2007 02 27 at 09:54 PM • permalinkGo here… T Blair too busy to post links.
Posted by Infidel Tiger on 2007 02 27 at 09:58 PM • permalinkDo we get a Free David Hicks with this?
Posted by Nilknarf Arbed on 2007 02 27 at 10:03 PM • permalinkCan I fly to London to present my cheque?
Posted by Stop Continental Drift! on 2007 02 27 at 10:26 PM • permalinkBut wait! There’s more!
Call now and we’ll ALSO assuage your guilt over poverty, ease your worries about disadvantaged minorities, comfort your conscience over the injustice of historical Western oppression of women— and we’ll even throw in this State of Kansas jello mold!
You won’t find a better guilt relief package ANYWHERE!
Call NOW!
And if I refuse?
Well, sir, the Enviroquisition will be calling to show you the instruments of torture. Actually, instrument. Single.
It’s calledPosted by SwinishCapitalist on 2007 02 27 at 10:29 PM • permalinkI’ve heard that the Spanish Enviroquisition also breaks out the Cardboard Chair - combined with the Goracle’s droning, the combination is enough to make even the strongest men weep.
Posted by Blue State Sil on 2007 02 27 at 10:36 PM • permalinkIts so close to the old pre reformation indulgences its not funnt.
“Among the equivalent terms used in antiquity were pax, remissio, donatio, condonatio.”
Or as we call them now, green power, energy saving lightglobes and carbon credits.“It is not a permission to commit sin, nor a pardon of future sin;..”
None of the carbon credits come with a caveat like this one though.“God alone knows what penalty remains to be paid and what its precise amount is in severity and duration.”
See even the old snake oil men left themselves a bit of wriggle room in their contracts.“Here, as in so many other matters, the love of money was the chief root of the evil: indulgences were employed by mercenary ecclesiastics as a means of pecuniary gain.”
Nice to see how little changes in a thousand years…Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2007 02 27 at 10:41 PM • permalinkfunnt is an old long lost language version of funny. Really…probably….look your going against consensus if you doubt me.
Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2007 02 27 at 10:45 PM • permalinkIn an interview with The Age last month, Mr Evans acknowledged that last September’s visit by former US vice-president Al Gore to promote his Oscar-winning global-warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth had helped generate a lot of publicity on climate change.
But he described Mr Gore’s film as “bullshit from beginning to end”.
Music to my ears and oh so true! It was also God awful, that is the little that I could bear to watch on a plane from LA a month ago.
But eventually all this alarmist stuff must unravel as people (hopefully) wake up to the fact that the world is still here, the seas haven’t risen, cities are not flooded and the polar ice caps are still there. But I wonder how long that will take.
Long time lurker, first time poster, great to be on the blog Tim…
Pompous Asshat Carbon Offsets—assuage three problems for the price of one. Only $29.99 up to, well, how much is your soul worth? St. Al’s Basilica ain’t gonna be cheap to build. And don’t get me started on the power bills. Dios mio!
Although, for nihilistic non-breeders, these people sure do take the next century pretty seriously. Probably one of those fallacies of self-centeredness…
Additionally, I have this paper w/ 95 theses… I tried nailing it to the door of the local church, but the local foreign film theater had glass doors, so I settled for tape.
People are selling carbon credits for not cutting down trees. I figure I’ll sell them for not starting bushfires. I reckon a decent sized bushfire up the Perth Hills puts around 5,000 tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere. At $5 a tonne, I’d only have to not start 2 or 3 a year to earn nice income.
BTW, I’m franchising the concept, all the Eastern states are still available. So be quick. They won’t last at these prices.
How’s this for a plan?
1. Have solar panels surgically grafted to everyone’s head, shoulders, back and chest.
Have converters and storage batteries surgically implanted in everyone’s gut. (The area is expandable and there’s always room for more, just ask any Fat American Minion)
2. Rework the economy to run on a multi tiered currency. One being the usual currency and the other being personal electricity output.
So, for example, when a customer, is eating at a chip shop or such such, (s)he can pull the electricity transfer cord from his/her arse and plug it into the receptacle at the table or counter and whatever electricity (s)he transfers to the shop serves as a credit on his/her bill.
This would also serve to motivate folk to spend more time each day outside. This would also serve as a wealth redistribution scheme of sorts because outdoor type workers would receive more access to personal electrical energy credits.
Also this would serve to motivate workers of the world to unite and chop holes in their factory roofs to allow more sunlight into their area of work, and allow for the free migration of environment from being exclusively an “outside” concern.
#28 - Good luck starting a bushfire today in Perth, Phil. Middle of what was going to be “hottest summer on record” it’s cold and rainy.
Fuck Algore and the Prius he rode in on. Someone’s heads gunan roll at VRWC HQ for not thinking of the GW scam first.
Posted by Infidel Tiger on 2007 02 27 at 11:20 PM • permalinkI am holding out for some of the real things - not those piddly little carbon credit thingos:
Al Gore’s fingerbone
A piece of the cross from when Suzuki was crucified by “big oil”
Tim Flannery’s front tooth (knocked out during turbulence on a business class flight from Australia to some overseas speaking assignment)You get hold of one of those puppies and your carbon credit balance will be in the black(?) for decades to come.
Every religion needs a liturgy in a dead language that no one understands.
Thank Junk Science, Gaia and Gore (The Holy Travesty) you didn’t go with French.
Posted by Infidel Tiger on 2007 02 27 at 11:26 PM • permalinkHow much carbon will those books release into the atmosphere when the GW Inquisition demands their burning…?
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2007 02 27 at 11:45 PM • permalink#48
Went over to the Canberra Times to check their coverage of the storms only to find it somewhere between poor and non-existent.
Did find this charming headline, however.
Posted by Margos Maid on 2007 02 28 at 12:03 AM • permalink1. Have solar panels surgically grafted to everyone’s head, shoulders, back and chest.
There are some (female) chests that MUST NOT be surgically altered, even for Mother Gaia™! You have been warned.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2007 02 28 at 12:09 AM • permalinkThis was not unexpected :-
http://www.voanews.com/english/2007-02-28-voa2.cfm
Looks like I will probably have to take out another loan.
Hoo rah! Don’t screw with Military Vets!
Posted by Infidel Tiger on 2007 02 28 at 12:21 AM • permalinkFrom rbresca’s link in #43:
[...]another version of the story says it was a wedding gift from the Byzantine Empress Irene
Damn - all I got was a bunch of small appliances and silverware.
Posted by Blue State Sil on 2007 02 28 at 12:23 AM • permalink$9.95? That’s it? Damn, Gorbal Indulgences come cheep.
Posted by Spiny Norman on 2007 02 28 at 12:36 AM • permalinkCheap, rather. I was shaking in amazement. Sorry about that…
Posted by Spiny Norman on 2007 02 28 at 12:37 AM • permalink#55, MM, when you get to seventy you tend to overcompensate for perceived slackening of, er… vigor.
Posted by Steve Skubinna on 2007 02 28 at 12:44 AM • permalinkTired of overpriced crap being pushed by newcomers trying to save your environmental soul for a price? Well, leave them all behind in the dust of an Australian winter with your own Personal Absolution for Carbon Original Sin. At only $5.99 PACOS™ will make you square with Gaia no matter how extensive your mansions or large your environmental awareness bus. PACOS™ brings you greenpeace of mind.
Posted by andycanuck on 2007 02 28 at 12:57 AM • permalinkBurning global warming heretics is bloody hard work.
By the time you crank up the solar heretic burner, the slippery bastards are liable to get away.
Posted by Margos Maid on 2007 02 28 at 12:57 AM • permalinkOoh, one other question:
If 25% of all overbearing gasbags in developed countries were to stop breathing and (thus) jetsetting about, how many Kyotos would that be worth? What’s the multiplier if we plant trees atop their graves?I’m unclear on the conversion factor, how many trees is a jet-setting carbon dioxide factory worth?
Can anybody point me to a global warming skeptics site that -does- discuss the effect of human activity on the weather? I assume that nobody believes we have no effect at all, so I’m keen to read some warming skeptics science. I mean, making fun of Al Gore is awesome fun and all, but if there’s a real issue underneath all the sniping, I’d like to know what the denialists are claiming as the alternative to all the hysteria.
Posted by Wolves Evolve on 2007 02 28 at 02:09 AM • permalink#67, Wolves Evolve:
Oregon Petition is a good place to start. The page linked is the cover letter, the link at the bottom of that page goes to the research article.
``As an investment play,’’ global warming is ``a bubble’’ and ``social short-term craze,’’ said Ken Fisher, who oversees $35 billion as chairman of Fisher Investments Inc. in Woodside, California.
Very interesting. Read it all at Andrew Bolts blogg below.http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/climate_changing/
Posted by DropDeadUgly on 2007 02 28 at 03:29 AM • permalinkWolves Evolve, the physics of the CO2 greenhouse effect are straightforward and we know the increase over the last 100 years should have warmed the world’s climate by about 0.3 of a degree (and note the maximum amount any level of CO2 in the atmosphere can increase the world’s temperature is a little more than half a degree).
The strange thing is that if you look at temperature records away from urban areas and human influence, we are not even seeing this level of warming.
This site has done a very good job of analysing data from remote sites in Oz and Antartica.
http://gustofhotair.blogspot.com/
A reasonable person looking at the evidence would conclude human induced greenhouse gas emissions are merely mitigating underlying climate cooling.
I’m still here, and I’m reading on those links. But thanks for using the term ‘these people’; it really helps raise the debate out of the gutter.
I am a screaming lefty, but I have serious problems with the way the climate change industry is run, most pointedly by turning it into a Channel Ten soap opera. “Climate change, global warming. We’re all to blame, and we don’t even know it.” is not an acceptable way for climate science to present itself, as far as I’m concerned.
I asked about some links and data because I find two things fascinating; how the left is patronizingly abusing a series of issues for political gain, and how the right is cynically muddying a series of issues for political gain. Working out how the science fits into both sides seems like a way out of the mess. It just seemed to me that by claiming a left-wing conspiracy, skeptics are pinning politics to the scientific donkey, which is a sure way to have reality come bite you on the proverbial. Just as I see overspending on daft cynical climate projects as counter-productive.
I’d rather see efforts made to reduce toxic industrial effluents and emissions -regardless- of any carnival about temperatures, on the common sense (and hopefully apolitical) basis that shitting in your own backyard isn’t the best way to run a country. 30 years ago climate science was an industry Australia led the world in and stood to make billions, but now I suppose we’ve put our eggs elsewhere. If its a lost opportunity to export an industry, that’ll be just as sad in my book. Either all the farmers complaining about desalination are ‘whingers’, or something genuine is occurring and its worth investigating properly.
But if its more fun to call people fat, then knock yourself out.
Posted by Wolves Evolve on 2007 02 28 at 05:30 AM • permalinkThis is my first time here (try the veal!), but if you want me to steal something, I could nab some links from Michelle Malkin; Seems to be par for the course.
Posted by Wolves Evolve on 2007 02 28 at 05:49 AM • permalinkWolves Evolve, that was a considered response, despite the fact you confabulated a number of issues.
The advice I’d offer is look at the data. The data tells what is real.
The internet does exactly one thing - disintermediation.
We don’t need the priests and prophets (and media talking heads) to tell us the answer any more we can do it ourselves (although a reasonable background in science helps).
# 26 brett_l -
Long time lurker, first time poster, great to be on the blog Tim…
Welcome brett_l. As a new applicant to the VRWC, you need to get your butt in the auditorium. We’re holding our sixth (~sigh~) Neocon Orientation for newbies and yes, we’re holding up the start until you take a seat. Unfortunately for you it’ll be a metal shaky one with a glint of frost added this morning by global warming.
Where is MarkL? The head minion needs to do this thankless stuff, not me.
Posted by wronwright on 2007 02 28 at 06:40 AM • permalinkWolves, none of us are against cleaning up pollution; we are against hysteria, hypocrisy, and the pointless destruction of our own economy (the wealth and strength of which is the only thing that makes cleanup of pollution possible—take a trip to any third world country and tell me how clean it is).
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2007 02 28 at 06:54 AM • permalinkWolves, if you have a lot of time, you can also try:
Posted by Art Vandelay on 2007 02 28 at 07:38 AM • permalink#86 - I’m glad that Andrea has mentioned cleaning up pollution.
All hail the mighty Andrea.
Cleanup Australia Day is almost upon us, and once again, I will be ankle deep in mangrove mud picking up crap that has washed into the nearby bay from Balmain. The prevailing winds around here seem to blow from Balmain towards my place, meaning that all the floaty litter ends up not far from my front door.
All praise her Awesome Majesty.
Thanks basketweavers. I hope your pubes spontaneously combust.
Posted by mr creosote on 2007 02 28 at 08:07 AM • permalink#89 brett_l,
Well, look at the new honcho who’s walked through the door. This new applicant to the VRWC doesn’t believe he needs to go through orientation. He’s way too busy to sit through the 2 weeks of 12 hour a day lectures by the likes of paco (multinational capitalism and how we profit from it), RebeccaH (the history of neoconservatism and the real conspiracies the left hasn’t figured out yet), and Andrea (WMD and how they can be pretty darn useful). And, of course, the 6 month boot camp in a 8th Dominican monastery north of Milan is probably not necessary either. Oh no.
I suppose I can just fax brett the bullet points of what he needs to know. He can read it at breakfast time, while he eats his eggs Benedict and crepe suzette. Right before his swim, sauna, and shower. Yes, maybe that would work for him.
brett_l, the fascists-in-training are sharpening their knives as we speak. Unless you want them to feed you to the team of Russian attack squirrels, I strongly suggest you get your ass in that chair! NOW!
Posted by wronwright on 2007 02 28 at 10:53 AM • permalink67. Can anybody point me to a global warming “skeptics site that -does- discuss the effect of human activity on the weather? I assume that nobody believes we have no effect at all, so I’m keen to read some warming skeptics science. I mean, making fun of Al Gore is awesome fun and all, but if there’s a real issue underneath all the sniping, I’d like to know what the denialists are claiming as the alternative to all the hysteria.
Sciencebits has good stuff.Here’s a start. Scroll up to see good links from fornow.
And this, I’m rather crude and antagonistic, but most of my arguments stand (I’m wrong about the % contribution of know GHG forcings[regarding Stott I was looking at two differnt time periods at the same time], I still haven’t been able to find that. )
Addressing fudged discount rates to justify spending. See Arnold Kling.
A glimse into models (reg required, but free).
The model successfully simulates global mean and large-scale land temperature variations, indicating that the climate response on these scales is strongly influenced by external factors. More than 80% of observed multidecadal-scale global mean temperature variations and more than 60% of 10- to 50-year land temperature variations are due to changes in external forcings.
Over the last three decades, global mean temperature near Earth’s surface has been increasing at a rate of 0.2 K/decade… solar and volcanic forcings are assumed to remain at 1999 levels…External forcings appear to be the main contributors controlling near-surface decadal-mean temperature changes on global and continental land scales.
Actually, there really is a business where you can buy an indulgence and assuage your guilt about Mother Earth—see here.
Posted by rightwingprof on 2007 02 28 at 04:13 PM • permalinkI doubt there’s such a thing as transparent trolling (oxymoron, isn’t it?), but thanks for the reading tips, blogstrop. I’ve been enjoying the links provided by _aaron and elsewhere, its interesting stuff especially when the antagonism is toned down and some climate science is brought in.
I mean to say, I’m unconvinced by any of it, but it is definitely very interesting reading that complicates a issue that has been indecently stupefied by both sides of politics.
I think ‘denialists’ is a great word, actually, it serves everybody quite well. ‘Skeptics’ doesn’t proffer any kind of authority whereas ‘denialists’ is flat and simple as a concept.
Posted by Wolves Evolve on 2007 03 01 at 12:20 AM • permalink...how the left is patronizingly abusing a series of issues for political gain, and how the right is cynically muddying a series of issues for political gain.
Well, then, you’ll like this blog; most of the posters here are tired of the hype and hysteria generated to gain that political gain.
I think ‘denialists’ is a great word, actually, it serves everybody quite well. ‘Skeptics’ doesn’t proffer any kind of authority whereas ‘denialists’ is flat and simple as a concept.
Except that “denialist” is very much a derogatory term, no matter who uses it, since “denial” is just another way of saying “No!”
“Skeptic”, OTOH, posits out that someone is asking questions, and attempting to get more data. “Authority” is not the issue; “validity” is.
And let us not forget “fanatic”, which is exactly the opposit of “denialist”.
So I’d be rather careful of flinging around “denialist” in this crowd; that implies that you are a fanatic. Which I doubt, but we’ve dealt with more than a few global warming fanatics in the past, and they tend to end up trolling when us skeptics fail to accept their holy doctrine.
As Dave S. said:
“Denialists”? Not a good start.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2007 03 01 at 02:08 AM • permalinkBTW, Wolves Evolves, this is a decent article on why “denialist” is not a good start.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2007 03 01 at 02:14 AM • permalinkAs the resident screaming lefty, I am more than a bit ashamed to see my comrades mutilate this issue; I am vastly preferential to a total energy conservation approach, and a full-frontal assault on our waste and effluent programs that goes far, far beyond Kyoto. Its a shame that we’re seeing it turn into a carnival; I wonder where they got their Powerpoints for the systematic creating Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt? Hmm… Tim’s new post of the Time bear is un-ironically panned as misleading while millions seethe in distrust over the right’s handling of the lead-up to Iraq. I very much think the two are connected in terms of political narrative, the left has something broad to latch onto and create an over-arching symbolic order - which is screwy because the first natural point would be to rally around a viable outcome to the West’s involvement in the Middle East.
Not to digress any further, but I’m aware that this blog represents not necessarily the hard right, but definitely the ‘playful’ right of the blogosphere who specialise in quick analysis and swarm philosophies on issues of the day - this is why I joined, to watch it happen and pick at the threads as I see them. I make no bones about the fact I take right-wing skepticism about global warming to be every inch as lunatic and unfounded as the manic depressives pushing a culture of guilt from the other side.
The bald fact for many people on the left is not that we feel ‘embolded’ by defeat in Iraq (yes, we lost) or the Democratic congress win (I predict the next Pres will be Guliani, in fact) - its that through all what you describe as the ‘moonbattery’ of the left during the anti-war rallies of 2002, something rather amazing happened on our side. If you don’t want to hear about it, then don’t read on.. but my thinking is that its the basis for a lot of the screaming matches that places like this profit from - at the expense of (gulp) realpolitik.
During 2002 and even before in the anti-globalisation protests (and how fun it is to make fun of them, right?) here was for the first time an absolutely irretrievable political logjam where the neocon right had dropped the veil and said ‘fuck it, let’s do this’, and talked openly about what the left had feared - a return to imperialism, and a construction of the economics of the nation-state around the military industry. That despite these protests, the war went ahead is one thing. That it cost this much is another. That it is a catagorical catastrophe is yet another. That there’s still intransigence on the right to clean it up is the real kicker. That given the reins to the machine, unfettered, laws be damned, and still drive the horse into a ditch needs to be classified as a monumental fuck-up that needs to be addressed from the right, not the left. Otherwise, we are going to see a horrific political shift in the West, and bullshit will be the only victor. The alternative to admitting it was a radically stupid idea is to suggest that we simply can’t do it (invade countries, install governments we like) in the first place, which is too frightening to consider, even for the likes of me.
Now, why, you ask, am I talking about Iraq in a thread about the global warming hysteria? I’m telling you, as Darwin is my witness, that in the wake of Iraq, the left has seen the political right disintergrate and smells blood - and we are becoming just as globally connected and ‘synergistic’ (stupid word) as the neo-con right. Some of us fear that the ‘global warming craze’ is just the beginning of a nasty cycle of political revenge, and if we start implementing stupid politics instead of smart policies, its another lost opportunity to transform the technological basis of the West towards energy-efficiency and waste reduction, which is what it should be about.
To continue this line, the pro-nuclear lobby has not offered a single point to convince the likes of me. I doubt I’ve seen as cynical and calculated an approach to an issue since I gained semi-sentience (I’m sure some of you will disagree). Nuclear power binds us to other countries’ technology, expertise and further into the global uranium market while other energies (note I say ‘other energies’, not clean fuels, etc). The suggestion that we need to lean on an outdated, inefficient technology instead of developing newer forms that we can sell on around the world is a absolute devastation of intellect. If Ron Walker wants it, chances are he’s been paid to want it.
That article on denialist is spot on; the word is mean to subconsciously connect to Holocaust denial, which probably means its use will skyrocket once they realise they can get away with using Hitler to win arguments. Still, Brendan O’Neill has his hands full with oil money, so I hardly believe his opinion anymore than a flyer in my letterbox. Another intelligent man with a richer man’s haircut.
Posted by Wolves Evolve on 2007 03 01 at 09:49 AM • permalink
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OK, but I’ll need some sort of link to tell me how.