Cooking the Books in the Name of Global Warming
Ever since the first Earth Day in 1970, which was accompanied by all sorts of doomsday prognostications which seem like the Woodstock era’s version of Reefer Madness, the apocalyptic tone of radical environmentalism has always encouraged its proponents that truth and skepticism could be discarded in the fight “to save the planet.” (Which we only have ten years to accomplish!) In 2007, Scott Pelley, now the replacement for Katie Couric (remember her?) at CBS, infamously likened global warming skeptics to Holocaust deniers:
While most of the country was watching the Green Bay Packers play the New York Giants, CBS aired an hour-long, severely one-sided special about the threat of global warming.
The special was hosted by CBS’s Scott Pelley. In January 2007, Pelley was asked why he refused to include global warming skeptics in his reporting. He responded, “If I do an interview with [Holocaust survivor] Elie Wiesel, am I required as a journalist to find a Holocaust denier?”
In 2007, Editor & Publisher, which, as its title implies, is a house organ for the MSM, ran an article headlined, “Climate Change: Get Over Objectivity, Newspapers.” The 2009 ClimateGate scandal justifiably transformed the words “hide the decline” into a near household phrase. Last year, when a would-be global warming-themed journalistic ambush against Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) went so badly that Inhofe himself put video of his reply up on YouTube, left-leaning Politico admonished its source for having attempted to gain access to Inhofe by claiming he had a relationship with the Website beyond simply freelancing a few op-eds.
In a 2006 article in the Christian Science Monitor, Julia Gorin spelled out relationship between President Bush’s then-War on Terror, and the left’s then-latest Moral Equivalent of War, global warming. As Julia wrote, “Freud called it displacement. People fixate on the environment when they can’t deal with real threats. Combating the climate gives nonhawks a chance to look tough. They can flex their muscle for Mother Nature, take a preemptive strike at an SUV. Forget the Patriot Act, it’s Kyoto that’ll save you”:
While the hawks among us worry about preventing the Armageddon that’s coming, our modern-day hippies just want to make sure the planet is pristine when it does. In fact, the more menacing terrorism becomes, the more some people seem to worry about the weather. Scared and unsure how to fight terrorists, they confront “climate change,” which only requires spending trillions of other people’s dollars on something that may not need fixing or may not be fixable. No wonder some of these people chain themselves to trees – they think money grows on them.
And that works in the other direction as well — a few months before his carbon footprint was reduced with extreme prejudice by SEAL Team Six, the Washington Post ran a story titled, “Osama bin Laden embraces his inner Al Gore.” And just as fake but accurate documents may have been used against the Heartland Institute, the whacky imams who ginned up the middle eastern riots against the Mohammed cartoons also introduced fake examples, to further enrage the faithful. And speaking of enraging the faithful, in recent years, environmentalist videos have certainly been dialing their eliminationist imagery up to 11.
Al Gore likes to alternately compare environmentalism to the civil rights movement and fighting against the Nazis. Once you’ve decided you’re waging the moral equivalent of war, as this Time cover from 2008 makes explicit, then apparently, all weapons are on the table. Or as Stacy concludes, “I do not accuse Peter Gleick and his fellow fanatics of any Stalinist ambitions, but when we see them engaged in Stalinist methods — publishing forged documents to smear their critics – aren’t we justified in suspecting that they are not otherwise honest?”
Thomas Sowell once told an interviewer:
There’s something Eric Hoffer said: “Intellectuals cannot operate at room temperature.” There always has to be a crisis–some terrible reason why their superior wisdom and virtue must be imposed on the unthinking masses. It doesn’t matter what the crisis is. A hundred years ago it was eugenics. At the time of the first Earth Day a generation ago, the big scare was global cooling, a big ice age. They go from one to the other. It meets their psychological needs and gives them a reason for exercising their power.
As Rahm Emanuel might say, never let a crisis go to waste — especially one you’ve manufactured yourself.
On the following page, sSome quick updates to this post:
Well,like anAL GOREtentive told his pack of pit chihuahuas…”By any means necessary”
It does not take a subtle appreciation of English prose to read the fake memo and see that the author is writing as though he is conspiring to do something “wrong”. The real problem here is the large number of young adults with college credentials who want to believe obviously dodgy information just because it gives them a chance to act out their beliefs. I wonder whether these childish individuals desperately searching for some sort of pseudo-religious motivation to yell, scream, and hurt can grow up quickly enough to avoid destroying the wealth and interpersonal trust inherited from previous generations. While it may be true that “If the fool persists in his folly, he will become wise.”, there is no promise that this wisdom will occur before, instead of after, the foolish behavior results in widespread destruction.
It’s not a Science; it’s a religion
No matter how much proof their “isn’t” the loons only scream louder
Taxing animal for farting is already alive and well in the EU
Carbom taxes on all planes in and out of Great Britain
The EPA shutting down 65,000 farmers for a smelt ?
And now Obama wants a Global Minimum Tax ??
The list is getting longer.
EPA regulation is choking the economy to the tune of $1 Trillion and climbing
We need a vote that gets this guy and his administration back to Chicago !!
“My judgment was blinded by my frustration with the ongoing efforts — often anonymous, well-funded, and coordinated — to attack climate science and scientists and prevent this debate, and by the lack of transparency of the organizations involved.”
So the skeptics are the ones trying to “prevent this debate” by disagreeing???? It sounds like the only “debate” this jackass wants to have is the one about how many billions of dollars we’re going to give him and his pals to “fix” the problem they otherwise don’t want to discuss. Someone please free us from “scientists” like this fraudulent scumbag.
“Here’s the thing. Whichever side of the global warming debate you’re on …”
Here’s the thing: *they don’t think it’s a debate*. Really. Look at the comparisons Gore and Pelley draw: the civil rights movement, the Holocaust. Now why would they conflate (alleged) science with historical fact? Simply because the latter is ironclad, irrefutable, “settled”.
This sleight of hand gives away the game. Of course history has its debates too — but note the cheerleaders conveniently choose examples with clear-cut “good and bad guys”. This is about power, not debates. Whatever works to muzzle the “enemies” is fair game; this Heartland memo is merely the latest example.
It’s not science: it’s politics.
islam is not a religion: it’s politics too.
This is how it works in socialist/totalitarian regimes. The first casualty is truth.
This story has more to come–one the most inflammatory documents Peter Gleick sent has been revealed as a forgery by Peter Gleick
1-metadata show that it came from the West Coast – Gleicks
2-the style of writing and poor punctuation in the forged document is consistent with Peter Gleick other writings.
Peter Gleick is in very deep trouble
1-he has already admitted to theft and fraud
2-he has now been revealed as a forger
Any even tenured academic would be fired for such behavior and would be employed in academia
-or any position of trust-ever again
Are you serious?
Trouble?
He will be rewarded, handsomely so, with (another) make-work job on the taxpayers dole, smug and condescendingly proud of his “martyrdom” in the fight against his enemies.
Think Bill Ayres
I taught a course called “Environmental Ethics.” Five students in it were in a program called “Environment Science,” which required no science – no biology (except one course in Field Ecology), no geology, no physics, etc. What they learned was to engage in politics. So I am not surprised that the self-styled “environmentalists” are ignoramuses.
The mystery solved on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rkf9yhDx7RQ
Hey, just when I get skeptical about warming, we have the warmest or second warmest winter in the history of taking temperatures around here. On the other hand, Anchorage…
….and the coldest in europe in many years. The more things change the more they stay the same. The US specifially the lower 48 are the only warm places this winter. But since last winter was colder and more snow in the north east than any in over 10 years, I would guess it equils out.
Yes, I couldn’t believe it when my brother in Berlin emailed me that it was -10F. It hasn’t been -10 in my neck of the woods, Eastern Massachusetts, for thirty years. But that’s what makes global warming or cooling very difficult to figure out, which does not, though, prove that it is not happening.
As I have said before, every glacier that I have seen in North America and Iceland, has been receding for many years. That and the newly opening NW passage is pretty conclusive evidence of cumulative warming. But my approach is more about how to take advantage of warming, rather than stopping it. Greenlanders can grow a lot more veggies now, maybe the way they could in the MWP. My growing season is certainly longer.
They used to call this type of fake journalism “agitprop” when it was published in Pravda and the Daily Worker.
No.
She was the first one in the MSM, but give credit to Steve Mosher. He is one of the behind-the-scenes guys active on the climate blogs. He spotted the linguistic idiosyncrasies. McArdle actually credited him.