You couldn’t have asked for a better snapshot of the chasm that divides today’s so-called expert classes from the mass of humanity than the snow crisis of Christmas 2010. They warn us endlessly about the warming of our planet; we struggle through knee-deep snow to visit loved ones. They host million-dollar conferences on how we’ll cope with our Mediterranean future; we sleep for days in airport lounges waiting for runways to be de-iced. They pester the authorities for more funding for global-warming research; we keep an eye on our elderly neighbours who don’t have enough cash to heat their homes.
Ahhhhhh, but you see, it isn’t JUST about global warming any more, it is conveniently the all-encompassing “climate change”. So of COURSE that could also mean more snow and ice, you see, because even though we say the temperature is going up, that is only one facet of “climate change”.
What these climate fraudsters are doing should be considered a crime.
Curiously, Brendan’s column shows the alignment between conservatives and old-style communism.
“This reveals the stinging snobbery at the heart of the politics of global warming. Because what we have here is an updated version of the elitist idea that the better classes have access to a profound and complicated truth that the rest of us cannot grasp.”
The greens may be socialists but they’re also something much much worse. This kind of elitism goes back to Plato’s philosopher kings and the absolute supremacy of doctrine of the mediaeval RC church and the Holy Office. It’s a complete rejection of the Enlightenment and everything that came with it: fundamental rights, universal justice, logic and reason, science and technology.
Not to understate the stupidity of communism and its offshoots, but labeling the greens as mere progressives understates the real menace of their agenda. George Orwell accurately described the world these would create or more correctly restore from a long dead and buried past.
But but but how can you not believe them? They are SCIENTISTS and why you just ask Alex we are all supposed to bow down before scientists. Why science is never wrong and is to believed even when your lying eyes tells you otherwise.
Why do people automatically assume that the Catholic Church represents total opposition to science?
As I look at the snow I will have to shovel, I want the “rationalists” to explain this “global warming” idea to me one more time.
I agree, cgh. The warmists techniques are parallel to the methods used by the medieval RC church to browbeat those who question religious authority. Only their interpretations are allowed. Only they are allowed access to the knowledge/data. The language of this knowledge is restricted. Their Word is Law. Guilt. Doom. Indulgences.
The only thing missing is the Dominicans to punish the heretics. Let’s hope that the right to an unchanging climate is not brought under the control of the Human Rights Commissions.
Well, the Catholic Church is 2000 years old and its influence and power put it in conflict with competing ideas (Science, Democracy, Protestantism, Paganism). The Catholic Church, like any institution, has changed and evolved. The modern Church has, for the most part, returned to its role as spiritual guide and no longer attempts to govern or punish unbelievers.
Just went out for a short drive. Got stuck twice and had to dig myself out. Even the main arteries of Edmonton are virtually impassible and there is almost no traffic today. Snowdrifts are shoulder high. But, hey, It’s just weather. Starting next year snow will be an extreme rarity. Or maybe the year after. Or …..
AGW Progress Report: Death Watch.
A remarkable account from leftist TORedStar; it delineates our AGW Progress in a fact-driven way. It’s worth spending time here on AGWPR.
Here are 2 samples of Our Progress:
“About 15 centimetres fell on Toronto and the surrounding areas of Mississauga, Brampton, Oakville and Burlington, far surpassing the five centimetres originally predicted by Environment Canada.”
““If it gets windy, it’ll be nasty but it’s not. At this point, it’s gorgeous,” she added. “We don’t stop for things like snow.””
…-
“Snow wreaks havoc for traffic in Canada’s West, East”
“EDMONTON—Heavy snow and high winds clogged city streets and blocked highways across much of Alberta and Saskatchewan on Saturday, contributing to a deadly crash east of Calgary.”
“Environment Canada also issued a blizzard warning in parts of southern Saskatchewan around Kindersley, Rosetown and Biggar.”
“In Nova Scotia, wintry weather contributed to a collision between a pickup truck and a small bus.”
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/918661–snow-wreaks-havoc-for-traffic-in-canada-s-west-east
Meanwhile over at Bourque and National Libwatch they have connected the horrible weather to PMSH not signing on to Cop15 or Cancun Swindle or whatever it is this week. Iggula is top of the page at Bourque, That face is scary, yea scary Mcleans magazin. What has this Russian American Canadian interloper promised Peeair?
Perhaps Europe should cease wasting taxpayers money on fraud science designed to ripoff private wealth via more taxation for the “greater climate good”. Buy more snowplows and build more deicing facilities with the savings could be a plan.
LC, that’s why I’ve always found the green movement so alarming, far more so than communism. If it followed enlightenment intellectual tradition the way Marxism and communism originated, it would fall apart when its logic fell apart. Communism was an economic theory based on a system of empirical logic and evidence in the 19th C. It accepted fervently the demand for modernization and the industrial revolution, because in their logic that meant ultimate power for the proletariat. It failed dismally of course for reasons we all now readily understand and fell apart because of its empirical failure in the 1980s. Whatever China is today, it is NOT communism.
It isn’t logic and rationality behind green ideology, it’s the blind faith of fanaticism. This is a whole ‘nother animal from anything Jeremy Bentham, Benjamin Franklin, Rene Decartes, John Mills or even Karl Marx would have imagined. All of the great enlightenment figures would have been utterly repelled by this, if for different reasons. Except for JJ Rousseau and his noble savage. Green ideology is intellectual recidivism. A deliberate attempt to return us to an earlier and more barbaric past. The only difference among the greens is how far back they want to diminish us.
Good article. Someone gets it.
cgh: perhaps the “green” movement is what Communism morphed into following the collapse of the USSR. When people were celebrating the fall of the Berlin wall and the disintegration of the USSR I felt a profound unease as I suspected an ulterior motive. I’ve had many arguments with friends about this; they were ecstatic that “we’ve won” and instead I was wondering what happened to all of the sleeper agents that were present in N. America waiting for the activation signal from Moscow.
What made me even more suspicious was Gorbachev’s new “environmental” mission. While I do have a strong streak of Slavic paranoia (a survival trait for people who live in Communist countries) there is a strong possibility that Russian agents have steered the “greens” in a direction that would result in the destruction of N. American industrial capability. The ever more onerous environmental regulations have resulted in a massive flight of industry to China; one of the countries not interested in complying with CO2 reduction. Also Russia has indicated that it has no interest in going along with the industrial suicide agenda that watermelon movements in the west are preaching.
It was inability of the USSR’s planned economy to compete with new weapons systems from the US economy that led to the seeming collapse of the USSR. The drop in US industrial capacity since that time has been almost as dramatic as the meltdown of the USSR and even semiconductor plants are being moved offshore due to environmental regulations. All it takes is for China to invade Taiwan, N. Korea to move into S. Korea and the Russians to block mideast oil and the US will have to depend on existing stocks of weapons and won’t be able to replace electronics as there just isn’t much electronic manufacturing going on in the US at this time. Taiwan and S. Korea are where the bulk of semiconductor manufacturing takes place.
China is testing anti-carrier ballistic missiles which, if successful, would negate the threat of US carrier groups in any Chinese invasion of Taiwan. China may not even have to fight seeing as it owns a good chunk of the US already.
While the west essentially burns money by putting up non-functional windmills and ultra-expensive arrays of solar panels, the Russians and Chinese must find this hilarious. No need to use a high altitude nuclear blast over N. America to destroy the electrical grid (and most unshielded semiconductors) via EMP, just ensure that enough windmills do the same job.
Speculating on the intent of the various factions within the AGW monster is above my pay grade but there certainly are historical similarities with other movements – communism, world socialism, Nazis, religious fanaticism, eugenics etc. Warmists knowledge of human nature, faith, science illiteracy and deference to authority is quite sophisticated. The Greens also knew they needed to target the weakest links, the MSM and intellectuals, to carry their propaganda. Historically, both groups are known to fall for fringe ideas and mercilessly promote them without acknowledging the cost to individuals and society.
Loki, you raise some interesting points. I would only note that the economically suicidal trends of the green movement in the west started long before the fall of the USSR. Your comment about environmental regulation is entirely correct. That’s the elephant in the room that the press persistently overlooks.
Now with respect to the green movement being a planned outcome, I would say only this. In Germany, for example, the reds and greens morphed into a single political entity long before 1990. So far, Russia and China have been using their networks for gathering military and technology data and within their own extended ethnic communities rather than large scale political movements.
With respect to China and Taiwan, I grow less concerned about military conflict there with each passing year. It’s a fact that China and Taiwan have more agreements between themselves than any other two nations on Earth. China has always taken the long view on these kinds of things, and it is more likely that China wants Taiwan to be incorporated as peacefully as Hong Kong was. Yes, China is building new weapon systems. Like those of the Cold War, these are primarily as deterrent, not for use.
Look at China’s policy with respect to North Korea. All the indications are that China is more concerned about the insanity of the regime than everyone except South Korea. What China is worried about is that NK will collapse aka East Germany, it will be amalgamated into South Korea, and China will have an American army camped on the Yalu River thanks to SK’s military treaty with the US. If China wanted to it could bring down NK virtually overnight. But it’s concerned about the consequences of what comes after. Put more simply, from China’s perspective, several million of their soldiers didn’t die in the war simply to have an American air base end up in Pyongyang.
So China wants to avoid chaos. But it also wants to avoid an uncontrolled (by Beijing) collapse of NK.
If there’s one thing we’ve learned in the last 60 years it’s the notion that war between major nations is now essentially impossible. Nuclear weapons have rendered war obsolete as an instrument of policy. Wars now only happen “asymetrically”.
There is a simpler explanation if you want to follow Ockham’s Razor. We all agree on how truly decadent our media and education systems have become. We should not attribute to enemy action what may be merely malign stupidity and vanity. Yes, I really do think some of our fellow citizens are viciously stupid all on their own. We are most likely to have done this all to ourselves.
To paraphrase the article, “kids are not going to know what an honest scientist is”.. sarc off.
Gotta go club another seal. They keep me up at night, so I’m forced to put another log on the rainforest campfire. Gawd that makes me feel bad.
Proof positive that once they are brainwashed it’s hard to undo. Just like many government “save everybody from everything” ads , if you tell a lie often enough it becomes the truth.