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NIHILISTS SLAMMED
A.A. Gill has had it up to here with moany greensters:
Let me tell you, you Peruvian-hatted puritan apostles of grassy nihilism, the single hottest problem facing the planet is not global warming, but the viciously smug fundamentalist prohibitionists of the green movement. Those wholemealy-mouthed ecologists, who devoutly wish to reduce everyone else’s existence to a self-righteous nose-drip probity that never moves more than four miles from the communal yurt, never eats anything that hasn’t been grown in the communal dung and never thinks anything that isn’t collectively miserabilist, are going to destroy life as we know it faster than an equator of traffic jams, a continent of unlagged lofts and a squadron of circling jumbos.
Gill is hitting harder than Gilchrist! He continues:
In the UK, we buy 296m books a year and read fewer than a fifth of them. Paper publishing is a bigger polluter and waster of resources than all the air miles flown. Every book could be written once and put on the internet. But the eco-sermonisers never mention any of that. They never go for books, because they all fancy themselves as the next Lovelock or a bit of a Rousseau. They all want to write half a dozen.
(Via murph)
UPDATE. Books aren’t the only problem:
Computers and other IT equipment have been blamed for causing as much global warming as the airline industry.
UPDATE II. An interesting piece:
Some people who call themselves scientists want science to become a substitute for religion, or at least function more like a religion.
UPDATE III. With good reason, Hanyu has faith in humans.
...food that has been airlifted can’t, shan’t, won’t be considered organic….On the other hand, I expect those of you who want to live proper will also continue to fight ceaselessly for the cancellation of Third World debt and the tearing down of EU trade barriers that so cruelly penalise African agrarian economies, to allow them to sell their surplus cash crops freely to us. Except, of course, that they’ll have to deliver them by bike.
A true enough observation, except that the pious are agitating for forgiveness of third world debt without opening trade barriers or in fact doing anything except allowing the average African dictator to rack another few million on their credit cards on trips to Paris.
The restaurant copped a bit of stick, didn’t it? From my observations, though, the fare they were serving up was standard English nosh.
England is the only country I have ever been to - and I include the third world in this - where I have been unable to eat something purchased in a food establishment.
Posted by The Mongrel on 2007 06 11 at 08:13 PM • permalinkWhat I did like about Canadian (yeah) Harper’s approach was to basically get everyone to agree to do something by 2050, by which time the inannity of the global warming B.S. would be obvious..
Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2007 06 11 at 08:20 PM • permalinkThe article needs several “OOOFF!” and “BAMM!!” balloons, a la Batman.
Talk about a bare-knuckles beatdown. WHOOO!
I think a lot of the GW believers are similar to those who believe in JFK conspiracy theories; they’ve just adopted “grassy nihilism” in place of “grassy knollism”.
Posted by Tex Lovera on 2007 06 11 at 08:38 PM • permalinkI was last in England about 8 or 9 years ago and the food was generally pretty bad. Particularly when compared to Sydney and Melbourne’s food which has been amazing for the last 10-12 years. I simply cannot recall the last time I had a bad meal, and I have certainly had a few, mainly rural, attempts at finding one.
Has Brit-food generally improved since then? If not, I would take his negative review and multiply it.
Do you know how many books are published in this country every year? Think of a figure, double it and times by your age: 206,000. More than any other country in the world. America vomits out 172,000. Oman, by comparison, publishes seven; Niger, five
Since the 1970s, more books have been translated into Lithuanian than into Arabic. There are 3.5 million Lithuanian speakers and over 200 million Arabic speakers.
More books have been translated into Portugese in 2000 than were translated into Arabic in the last 65 years.
The number of books that are translated into Spanish in a single year is one thousand times the number that have been translated into Arabic, ever.
I’m not sure it’s anything the Arabs (even the greeny ones) should be proud of.
paco
Now THATS a hole with no bottom.
2 of the densest elements known to man.Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2007 06 11 at 09:46 PM • permalinkHey, Paco! Did your boy get that slot playing with the Secret Jew Rockets he wanted?
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2007 06 11 at 10:02 PM • permalink#7 - Well, once you own the koran and The Protocols of The Elders of Zion, your reading is basically taken care of. Backpack Bombs For Dummies is a luxury item.
Gill and Clarkson are two of the last redeeming features of Britain.
Posted by Infidel Tiger on 2007 06 11 at 10:03 PM • permalinkThose wholemealy-mouthed ecologists, who devoutly wish to reduce everyone else’s existence to a self-righteous nose-drip probity that never moves more than four miles from the communal yurt, never eats anything that hasn’t been grown in the communal dung and never thinks anything that isn’t collectively miserabilist…
BLAMMO!
The communal yurt. I love it!
A.A. Gill: a new Blairite hero.
Posted by Spiny Norman on 2007 06 11 at 10:13 PM • permalink“Chicken, cashew nut and coriander looked like a hippo’s inflamed tonsil; the smell of it was like vinegar in the eyes.”
I take it he didn’t like the food?
Posted by Barbara Skolaut on 2007 06 11 at 10:32 PM • permalinkPaco—Mebbe just as well. A FAE warhead for a portable rocket launcher would be hellacool to shoot, but I’d be nervous carrying them around.
Oh, well, that’s why God gave me enlisted men…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2007 06 11 at 10:42 PM • permalinkPaco:
No, he wound up staying just a humble grunt.
heh. hehehe. hahahaha! Muahahahahahaha! heh.
No such thing as a humble grunt. Grunts rule. That’s just a plain fact. The world is divided between 03 Walklots and REMFs.
If your son is lucky, he’ll get to be blessed as an 0351. There’s nothing quite so cool as knowing that you have the training and weaponry to reach out and destroy anything groundbased that can show up on any battlefield.
If he has angered the powers that be or is somehow cursed, he might get made into an 0341.
Computers and other IT equipment have been blamed for causing as much global warming as the airline industry.
Yes, that’s why I buy Al Gore carbon credits to makeup for my use of the Personal Assitstant (Coal Operated)®. The PACO®, affectionately known to many as the Raspberry, is based on the Watt steam engine. Now available in 56hp and 112hp models. PACO®: computing life goes better with coke.
Posted by andycanuck on 2007 06 11 at 11:50 PM • permalinkDarn. It looks like I misplaced my Proofreading Andy Comments Organiser® or I wouldn’t have mistyped “Assistant”. Preview Is My Friend, but PACO® gets the job done.
Posted by andycanuck on 2007 06 11 at 11:55 PM • permalinkMeanwhile, left columnist Alexander Cockburn slams environazis with their hands in the till:
The overwhelming majority of climate computer modellers ... (are) ... the beneficiaries of the $2 billion-a-year global warming grant industry.
AA Gill’s article is brilliant. Three cheers!
It might interest the organic set that as far as CO2 emissions go, it’s better to fly tomatoes to London from Spain during the winter than to grow them in a warmed greenhouse in one of the home counties. But then of course, this is not what it’s all about, is it?
I can remember the first time I went to China. It was winter. On the streets of the city in which I was attending university to learn Mandarin, great piles of Chinese cabbage lay frozen. Some stockpiles were hundreds of metres long and 2 metres high. This was the only green vegetable that most people had during the entire winter. Even on the university campus, people had dug holes and filled them with cabbages so they had some greens during winter.
Several years later I returned to the city. It was winter again. But this time there were no frozen cabbage mountains. This time the markets were full of strawberries from the US, oranges from Australia, apples from Europe, etc., etc., etc. Everyone to whom I mentioned this was happy they could purchase such things. Not everyone could afford the exotic fruit and vegetables, but most people could afford more than cabbages.
I can recall having lunch in my Chinese-language teacher’s flat one day. She served up what can only be described as a corn pancake (I’m not sure there’s an English term for the Chinese name). It was edible, but bland and hardly nutritious. It was one of her nostalgia foods , because it was all she lived on as a child during the Cultural Revolution (while she was working in a factory instead of attending primary school). She also once said to that if anyone ever tried to take her washing machine away she’d kill them.
I’m with her. And I’m a happier person knowing that many Chinese people are better fed now than they ever have been. Gill’s “smug fundamentalist prohibitionists of the green movement” will point towards growing obesity problems in China, and health problems brought on by fast food, lollies, cool drinks, etc. But most parents I know in China are smarter than that, and limit their children’s intake. Yes, there are fat children, but most Chinese kids are still string-bean thin and healthy.
I will clock about 30,000 airmiles this month again. Unlike most of the morons complaining about CO2 emissions, I know that the planes I fly these days emit considerably less than even ten years ago. I fly airlines that charge more but have younger fleets. I have faith in human ingenuity to make jet engines even more efficient over the next decade.
A wonderfully engergetic and smart Hong Kong businessman by the name of Victor Fung once said to me: “Most people look at China and see 1.3 billion people as causing problems. I look at China and imagine its contribution when the same percentage of Chinese are contributing to the world as Americans.” It’s a wonderful way to look at things. And I am with Victor Fung as well.
Of course China faces problems. I spend a great deal of my time in the polluted Pearl River Delta. My copmany has an office in Beijing: I was there last week and the pollution was thick enough to cut with a knife. I felt like I was eating metal on one particularly bad day - the air was like a heavy metal fog. China will sort this out, too. Just as have the Germans, the Americans, and others. The answer is not to forbid them cars, washing machines and air travel. The answer is to allow spontaneous creativity.
I have faith in humans.
Awesome post, Hanyu.
Don’t apologise for the length, it was worth the read.Posted by daddy dave on 2007 06 12 at 01:38 AM • permalinkExcellent post, Hanyu! I agree—allow people the chance to be creative, and they will solve problems. Stuff them into a process, and they become unimaginative. I see this at work every day.
Computers and other IT equipment have been blamed for causing as much global warming as the airline industry.
By that standard, I have a HUGE carbon footprint…..I have several computers on at the house all the time. There’s a reason why my friends call me “Mr. Gadget”.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2007 06 12 at 01:39 AM • permalinkA comment posted on Andrew Bolt’s site shows another possible participant in the scourge that is Gerbil Worming.
Posted by Keith F of Gold Coast. on Tue 12 Jun 07 at 04:03pm
Maybe it is good to exaggerate for a cause.There is a frightening development in the world that people are missing in the debate and that is the effect of the air guitar. http://www.airguitarworldchampionships.com/EN/agwc-network.html
Surely it is no coincidence that since the popularity of the air guitar in the past decade we have had melting ice caps, melting mountains, rising oceans and the onset of the plague.About time the blood hounds in the media investigated the dangers of the AG on GW/CC.
:)
The envirotards give themselves away as rank little totalitarian power-mongers and wholly unserious about that which they purport to advocate. AGW is merely the latest in a long line of collectivist busy-work for the proles and will change when this particular scam is ruined for them by serious people.
There will be a lot of dishonest scientists with ruined careers—if there is any justice. Big IF, that.
Do we need a target?
The Qld State Govt announced a 5% unemployment target a few years ago and were roundly laughed at. They even admitted to little idea of policies designed to bring this about. Circumstances collided and we now have 3.9% unemployment, largely due to the mining boom.
Conversely, the Federal Government refused to set up an unemployment target of 5%, and have now broken a 34 year to bring unemployment down to 4.2% nationally.
Same result, different target mentality.
So where am I going? To the 60% by 2050. In good old CA, that State has an 80% target I believe, and is largely symbolic, but based with a few policies encouraging research. But will not having any target achieve the same if you have the same policies? Why wouldn’t it? How is 1 part of the industry supposed to say let’s reduce by x% as part of this goal, and others go y%, and somehow we all combine to get to z%.
All this target setting may actually limit technology. Why? Well the car manufacturer may look for cleaner technology to get emissions to reduce by x%, and get compensated for it, but refuse to go further in their research because there is nothing there for even better technology. or something along those lines.
Sure they often trumpet we beat the emissions by x% - but how many just pass the mark?
While I don’t mind people having goals - there is a danger in only getting that far, when you could have gone so much further.
I’m pretty angry about all this money being wasted for pure gestures on cardon evils. I support reducing pollution and our abuse of resources. I just hate having hypocrites in glass houses telling us how to live.
I for one welcome our new Canadian overlords.
Our Canadian posters have been keeping this a little bit quiet! I cant wait for the next “peak oil” chicken little to pop his head up if this is correct.
Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2007 06 12 at 03:36 AM • permalinkThis is sort of OT
It is nanny state stuff
But research has shown an anti-smoking ad shown at the movies actually encourages smoking!
And it was lovely to see concern about other posters here - has anyone heard from 1.618 yet?
Posted by aussiemagpie on 2007 06 12 at 04:37 AM • permalink#33 frollicking.
I was a bit worried about that link until I was reassurred by the message:NO-SPAM PLEDGE: We will NEVER rent, sell or give away your e-mail address to anyone for any reason. You can unsubscribe from Investment U with a few clicks.
- Dr. Mark Skousen, Investment U Chairman
It’s also good that he is a PhD. Or is that an MD?
ReasonMacLucas has it wrong. It is not scientists wanting science to be a religion.
Science is simply a methodology which enables us to cosntryuct, hopefully, successively more accurate models of the universe.
He is wrong in stating “some people who call themselves scientists”. When I see such people, I see people with an ideology, or religion, trying to hijack science to their own purposes.
Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2007 06 12 at 08:05 AM • permalinkFollowing on #38. We are seeing a second wave of Lysenkoism.
Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2007 06 12 at 08:06 AM • permalink#33 TFM, shhh….
....just burn all the Arab oil as soon as possible!
Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2007 06 12 at 08:19 AM • permalink#24 Hanyu:
It tends to be hard to see the big picture on things like this sometimes, but it’s interesting to see posts like this. At church, my now former bishop has been involved with a group called Unitus, which is a so-called “microcredit” lender that operates in developing countries. What they do is give what would be to us small (generally under $100) loans to people, which they can then use to do things like purchase livestock or buy supplies to go into business. Quite frequently, for people willing to put the effort into something like this, they are able to use the proceeds from their purchases (for example, people who buy livestock can sell milk) to pay off the loan, and then have the means to become self-sufficient.
Here’s a great rant in the letters page of the Aus:
Steven Scroopy of Canberra (12 June at 01:32 PM)
For those of you that still struggle to understand what a leftie is. Let me explain.
A leftie is basically a politically correct self absorbed moonbat.
It is their total bias in their politically correct view points that gives them away. For example, a lefty will take every opportunity to rubbish America. A lefty will complain about American gun culture, but they will not talk about 12 year old kids cutting heads off in Pakistan. The left is all too quick to criticise hardcore Christians, especially the evangelists in America. But when it comes to radical Muslims, they call you culturally insensitive for raising the issue. Etc… etc… etc… It’s that sort of bias that shows them for what they are.
I’d like to remind the lefties that post in here of a few things. May be worth thinking over.
1. Communism is not about common wealth, but about depriving people of any personal possessions
2. Socialism is not about society, but about depriving people of the means of production
3. Human rights are not personal rights, but collective obligations.
4. Political correctness has nothing to do with tolerance, and everything to do with prohibition of opinions
5. Excessive multiculturalism has less to do with cultures, and more to do with the repudiation of nationhood
6. Self-loathing is not about repentance, but about depriving others of their moral foundation.Wish I had said it!
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Interesting speculation over at Climate Audit that ENSO, PDO and Solar Cycles are all pointing in the direction of cooler climate and that the troposphere temps have dropped abruptly.
The climate modellers are going to be busy
fudgingadjusting the models and data.