On the last day of COP 15, staring at a Jumbotron where Hugo Chavez was addressing the conference, something was nagging at me besides the obvious (that half the audience was enthusiastically applauding a maniac). I was trying to figure out what it was about the conference that so perplexed and disturbed. And then, before the Caudillo had concluded his tedious remarks and long before the “meaningful deal” between the world leaders was announced, I realized what it was. We had returned to the Middle Ages.
A high tech Middle Ages, of course, but still the Middle Ages. Forget the Renaissance, forget the Enlightenment, forget Spinoza, Locke, Galileo and everybody else, we had returned to our roots as gullible and idiotic human beings, as willing to believe in the primacy of anthropogenic global warming as we would in the sighting of the Madonna at a river crossing twelve kilometers south of Sienna in 1340.
And this even after the revelation of the Climategate emails and documents, not to mention the further revelations about the manipulation of Russian climate data with NOAA and NASA themselves complicit. No, the show must go on. The UN Pope had convened the College of Cardinals in Copenhagen. Everyone must attend, including the Princes of Macedonia and the President of Tuvalu.
Not that anyone believed it.
Except perhaps the earnest young woman from Mother Jones, I watched question, in a style reminiscent of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, some Republican House Members at a press conference, demanding to know if they believed in man-made global warming.
I had had my own, perhaps more humorous, Close Encounter of a Congressional Global Warming Kind only a couple of hours before. I was at the Marriott to interview Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WISC), when, on my way out, who do I spy in the gift shop (where else?) but Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY). I knew instantly why God had invented the Kodak Zi8 flip cam I had in my pocket.
I sashayed up to Rangel and, putting on my most sycophantic smile, asked for an interview. Question one was the softball. How do you feel about the conference, sir? (He thought it was a good thing.) Question two was a little more troubling. But what about all these Climategate revelations? The Ways and Means Chair grew rigid. This was settled science, he assured me, and hurried off, no doubt to a closed door meeting of the House Ethics Committee. (Everyone else was in Copenhagen. Why not them?)
Well, not everyone. Like a good medieval pilgrim, I’m leaving tomorrow. It’s pretty cold here in warming land and I’ll be glad to get back to sunny LA. But I did have a very good meal at a place called Det Lille Apotek. As for everything else, I’m not so sure. I’ll have a lot more to say about it probably. It’s long plane ride back and I’ve got a spare battery for my laptop. Video of my Close Encounter with Rep. Rangel should be up on PJTV shortly. Rep. Sensenbrenner – a bit longer and quite a bit more serious – should be up next week. Oh, and in case you’re interested, I never did get to that special event with Chavez, Morales, Raul Castro and Zelaya referred to in the post below. Turned out it was an hour out of Copenhagen in blizzard conditions. I don’t know if anybody went… or if Zelaya really was there… but certainly not me. Next time I promise to take one for the team, be aware that’s not true in conditions of extreme global cooling.
(Scroll down Copehagen notes 1 and 2)
If a grown up ever occupies the White House again, you should be up for a Medal of Freedom for this week’s work, Roger.
Mr. Simon:
“…who do I spy in the gift shop (where else?) but Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY).”
You don’t say.
Just out of curiosity, what was he buying?
I do SO hope it was one of those little “Copenhagen in a snowstorm” glass globe thingies to commemorate the conference…the irony would delicious.
Middle Ages is correct. The elites want to be able to flit off wherever they want, but keep us serfs tied to the land: buy local food, don’t buy much “stuff”, oh and you can’t go anywhere (except perhaps by bike) because of the carbon footprint.
Meanwhile, they get to buy carbon indulgences. And if you are a denier, well then you get shunned, reputation wrecked (perhaps some time in the stocks is next?)
neo-feudalism.
Someone should go to work on a new, expanded edition of Mackay’s “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds” with a chapter on AWG. The speculation in carbon credits makes the 17th Century tulipmania seem benign.
Right on target, Mr. Simon.
We imagine that we are somehow as advanced intellectually as we are technologically, but we are not as our fearful gullibility demonstrates. We are as superstitious as our pious ancestors who burned witches. We scoff at this behavior and imagine ourselves so much more enlightened these day. Then we watch Al Gore’s movie, weep for the polar bears, and beg the global central government to protect us from global warming.
Since this agreement has solved that problem for good then I’m wondering when the argument between the Roman tonsure and the Oriental tonsure will be addressed?
The whole thing sounds so surreal. Spending real money and real resources on a problem that may or may not exists. And when you think of the track record the UN has dealing with other people’s money…how can we trust them anyway?
Your finding something interesting and having a camera handy is exactly what the new technology is doing for us. Running across a senator sneaking out of a hotel, a cop beating a guy at a bus station, or a thug threatening a citizen in Iran…all of these prove that We THE People will eventually take back this corrupt world. People did use to firmly believe we were being watched from above, now we’ll really have them under the microscope. Evil really does lurk in the dark (un-imaged) corners of the world. Thanks for reminding us how much more we know about the world! Once the lame stream media is gone the filters will be removed.
Not quite back to the Middle Ages it is, but that they in their jets would have us go back to that Alternate Reality Middle Ages whist hath no Warm Period Climatic Optimum.
@ 7. SenatorMark4:
Everyone that doeth evil
feareth the light…:)
You betcha – Information
wants to be free, and the
Web provides the escape
route; the Truth is out there.
Love this piece. Great writing style.
The victim card has been played so effectively that we can no longer resist anything. They are loading our money on a fleet of tractor trailer trucks and whisking it away so that we may feel that our sins will be forgiven. We, zombie-like, can do nothing but smile and groan quietly.
The Dark Ages, ya, that pretty well sums up everything going on right now.
What ever happened to PRIVACY? Wasn’t Bork lynched for denying it? I mean, give poor Rangel some peace and quiet. If a man can’t even SHOP…
Saying that people in the Middle Ages were “gullible and idiotic” is unfair. They weren’t as technologically advanced, but in many ways they were far more rational and humane than modern man. Here’s a short list of abominable things that arose since (and in many cases because of) the Enlightenment:
+ Race-based chattel slavery
+ Genocide
+ Marxism
+ Socialism
+ Eugenics
+ “Gangsta” rap
+ “Reality” television programs
+ The Snuggie
+ Charles Rangel
Medieval man believed that God ruled the universe because he created it and laid down its rules, and so any temporary “climate change” was divinely willed or permitted. (That’s a perfectly rational supposition, even if you disagree with it.) They weren’t so foolish as to think they could control the rain and the air.
Only with the Enlightenment — the great project of trying to form societies without God, with man at the center — that the *concept* of man-made climate change is possible. Because if God does not exist, or he takes little interest in earthly affairs, then man must be the one who manages the earth and all that is in it.
In most cases, believing in a Marian apparition is perfectly harmless. Did anyone in the Middle Ages ever try to impoverish the entire human population because Mary told them they should? Yet there are millions of people, many of them with multiple advanced degrees, who believe that we are going to permanently damage the Earth by driving cars and exhaling.
Who are the greater idiots?
“…settled science…” quoth Sir Rangel of Harlemville, Prince of America and Representative to the HOAX and FIASCO Festival in Copenhagen.
These asshats are becoming more and more ridiculous, but they are no longer able to hide their ignorance, duplicity and criminality. Charlie, are you going to resign before or after you pay your back income taxes?
“I do SO hope it was one of those little “Copenhagen in a snowstorm” glass globe thingies to commemorate the conference…the irony would delicious.”
No such luck, Bligeman. It wasn’t that kind of gift shop anyway. Our Charlie was looking at the expensive jewelry. Georg Jensen, that kind of thing.
As far as the “settled science” and “peer review” issues are concerned, does no one recall the massive fraud committed only a few years ago? http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/physics-and-pixie-dust
The article mentions several cases of academic fraud which “slipped through” the peer review process within the last ten years, but the book is mainly about the curious case of Bell Labs researcher Jan Hendrik Schön, who managed to get dozens of journal articles published, including a dozen in one year between Nature and Science, two of the supposedly most exclusive and prestigious.
The man’s output was astounding – he would publish more work in a month than most active researchers would in a year. All of it was “peer reviewed,” of course. And, ALL of it was bunk. Crapola. BS. Garbage. Phony balogna.
Yet, it ALL got through the “peer review” process at virtually all the “scholarly” journals of science. NONE of his articles were rejected – some were questioned by reviewers, but they accepted his equally bogus addenda and explanations. All this even though NONE of his breakthroughs could be reproduced in a lab – which is what the peer review process is theoretically doing.
Nonetheless, we should IGNORE “Climategate” because there was peer review? Thanks, what a relief!
I have also come to the conclusion that we entering the “New Dark Age.”
I’ve been struck by the same realization: that a society that prides itself on its vast knowledge and “technical advancement” is so devoid of the understanding of the scale of our universe, our galaxy, our solar system, that “educated” people believe that we can not just prophesy the climate but actually influence it.
We have not moved beyond the days, one thousand years ago, when the sycophants of Knut (Canute) the Great, King of what is now England and Norway, claimed that he “could command the tides to turn”. So the savvy old viking had them move his throne to the beach at low tide, and demonstrated their absurdity. We can’t change the tides today. We can’t harness their power to generate electricity. We can’t divert hurricanes. We can’t harness he power of lightning. We can’t halt the motion of tectonic plates. We can’t prevent erosion. We can’t effect any change of climate.
But power motivated political charlatans can convince allegedly educated people in high places that we can control emissions of a trace gas sufficiently in populated land areas to alter the climate globally and permanently – and, if we don’t to so immediately, within a decade sea levels will have changed more than they have changed previously over several millenia. It claims to be “science” but all the “relevant data” is just so much chicken entrails.
Would that Obama was half as smart and bold as as a middle-ages Norse warrior king.
“..as willing to believe … as we would in the sighting of the Madonna at a river crossing twelve kilometers south of Sienna in 1340. ”
Heck, I believe I saw her there last Tuesday.
I think she was buying some Prada or Versace for her new tour.
No, we’re back prior to the Middle Ages. We’re in the era of earth worship, leaders who think they are gods, and elites who think the entire population is no better than Islam thinks women are. Were we as advanced as the Middle Ages, we’d at least recognize that we do not control the weather and that people who swear they want to kill you shouldn’t be asked to please come and settle in our villages.
There’s a way out of this mess, but the fact that a majority elected these fools pretty well shows that we’re not going to get out of it until after it gets a LOT worse. Whether misled or not, people who elect someone to be the chief executive when they know nothing about them other than the color of their skin are simpleton racists who don’t deserve to be spared the consequences of their own actions. As for anyone being surprised over the lies used to justify this power grab in the name of avoiding climate change, why would people who insist that a human fetus isn’t human even bother to do the kind of hard work real data and real science require? They know that as long as the political elite want a particular result, those providing the rational for it can tell any lie they like and be well rewarded for doing so.
Regards
Climate Change (wait, was is previously called Global Warming???) = Y2K. Gee, 2C plus be GREAT for me (live in Sweden, TX born & lived) Climate change means the 4 seasons I have grown up with all my life. How many dollars were spent on the Y2K? And now, as I read, I’m trying to figure out WHY, Charles Rangel is even in Copenhagen (particularly since it’s at US taxpayers expense).
I’ve had a theory for some time now (actually a hypothosis, a theory is proven through experimentation). Unlike in the middle ages where vassals were land owners that owed allegience to the king, today the vassals are CEO’s, Boards of Directors, etc. that owe alliegence to whatever central government authoity there is in any given nation. I’m not saying we should hate the rich man or any of that statist crap. I’m saying that paths in life that man can take should separate the path to power and the path to wealth. Only one can be chosen by any one man. Increasingly it seems they are merging.
Middle ages? Seriously?
This “interview” is another example of why the Democrats are going to have to license “journalists”…the UN already supports this concept.
Can’t just have anybody interview a corrupt member of Congress in a gift shop.
Not only medieval, but pre-Copernican in that Man has once again been placed at the center of the Universe (anything that happens, particularly anything bad, must be because of us.) Closely allied with this is is the U.S.-centric view that anything bad that happens must be because of the U.S
I was trying to figure out what it was about the conference that so perplexed and disturbed. And then…I realized what it was. We had returned to the Middle Ages…to our roots as gullible and idiotic human beings…
I think something like this when I read of creationists sitting on state school boards and what they want to do to textbooks. Hell, what has happened to textbooks, not to mention the culture at large, even apart from the creationists.
on my way out, who do I spy in the gift shop (where else?) but Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY).
It’s too bad you didn’t get in more questions…
Hey, Charlie, how come it’s taking your House Good Buddy & Protector, the Speaker herself, so long to investigate your financial shenanigans ? Didn’t she promise to have all that wrapped up by January 2009?
Instead, you come here over here on Nancy’s jets, one of some 20 odd “congressional” guests of the American taxpayer, to enjoy a freezing Danish winter ?
Charlie Rangel was there? Yep, follow the money. Does he do anything that does not personally benefit himself?
We have not moved beyond the days, one thousand years ago, when the sycophants of Knut (Canute) the Great, King of what is now England and Norway, claimed that he “could command the tides to turn”.
Didn’t Obama claim during the campaign that the seas would stop rising if he were elected President and that the oil crisis could be solved through proper tire inflation ?
And we elected him anyway ?
From Obama’s July 2008 speech in Berlin, a True Believer, or pretend true believer,in catastrophic AGW.
“As we speak, cars in Boston and factories in Beijing are melting the ice caps in the Arctic, shrinking coastlines in the Atlantic, and bringing drought to farms from Kansas to Kenya.”
I am very grateful, at the very least, that the Earth turning on her axis and revolving around the sun cannot be influenced by the machinations of Earthly politicians.
If they could concoct some “policy” regarding same, believe me, they would.
Relativity and quantum mechanics are not settled science. They conflict with each other. In addition our most distant space probes are moving in away that conflicts with relativity. This means Einstein like Newton before him will be over thrown.
I am a organic chemist. For every 10,000 non-water molecules in the atmosphere 3 are CO2. The industrial revolution is slowly adding a 4th and Politicians are telling us the Heat capacity of the system will go up 5oC. Bullshit.
I used to think we were headed for the Middle Ages, too. But we’re going back father than that.
The Islamists want to (literally) blast us back to the 7th Century A.D. (with 20th Century WMD- how ironic).
The “deep-ecos” want us in the Old Stone Age”.
And the “enlightened elite’” will “compromise”… by only taking us back to the 4th Century B.C. Specifically, to the Persian invasion of Greece, in which Xerxes demanded tributes of “earth and water” as he strove to abolish the Greek culture’s nasty tendency to reject naturist mysticism in favor of logic.
At this point, the difference between Xerxes and his priests, and the likes of George Monbiot, James Hansen, Hugo Chavez, Robert Mugabe, and even President Obama, is very difficult to discern.
Someone needs to quote Leonidas to this bunch. This battle must be fought with words and facts, not spears, but it is the same battle. The stakes once more being reality, sanity, and the future of humanity.
(Hopefully, this time around, the “Athenians” won’t be late for the ball.)
clear ether
eon
The gods want to destroy the world – they’ve succeeded with the first step in making it mad, mad, mad…
How the (expletive deleted)® can a document be signed in which one agrees to disallow a 2 degree Celsius global temperature rise???
I’d rather count dancing angels on the tip of a needle.
Don’t be too hard on the Middle Ages! Back then, the Church said that apparitions of the Madonna, etc., were PRIVATE revelations, not doctrines of faith that one had to believe. The high priests of global warming are not quite so tolerant.
The philosophes of the Enlightenment arrogantly damned 1000 years of European history as “the Dark Age” or “the Middle Ages”, as merely a placeholder between classical civilization and their own enlightened times. But their complacency was misplaced; as is ours.
As I write this I see that there are at least 39 comments ahead of mine, and all of them express the same underlying observation: This man-made global warming stuff is a fraud.
A fraud, just like TARP and the Stimulus package and the Health Care quote-unquote “reform”.
The Left and the Democrats have now captured those particular hills. Lets all work together to make sure they pay rent on them.
@rbj is right.
I can’t believe you forgot to mention the purchasing of “indulgences” (carbon credits).
Maybe we’ll be lucky enough to see a new “Martin Luther” emerge in our lifetime and enter “an environmental reformation.” I don’t think that attempting to minimize our negative impact on the environment is a bad thing. In fact, I think that all this stupid focus on a harmless gas eclipses real environmental issues. Areas where we could make a positive impact without trying to wreck the economy.
Which brings us back to the Middle Ages again. If you believe most global warming leaders are pious saints, then I’ve got some medieval cardinals to introduce you to (and some carbon credits to sell you).
#39 river:
“How the (expletive deleted)® can a document be signed in which one agrees to disallow a 2 degree Celsius global temperature rise???”
Easy. It’s the Transnational Progressive Statists’ wet dream come true…they’ve done gone and passed a law against bad weather.
Next snowstorm hits, they’ll be rounding people up for prosecution, (because SOMEONE is gonna have to take the blame!).
See you in the gulag.
Using the Middle Ages, the “Dark Ages”, as the ultimate insult for what is now happening is not apt and reveals a shallow knowledge of history. People who use the “Dark Ages” club are still drinking the same Enlightenment KoolAid that has ultimately created the very nihilism that they presently bemoan.
Roger, if you want to know why Charlie RANG HO was in Copenhagen, it was to give his official blessing for ALBORE to change his name to ALWHORE. After all, RANG HO knows a few things about being a HO and since ALWHORE is now Soros HO, hes part of the HO “brother hood”.
# 28 You hit it right on, only wish your comments could be printed on the front pages of the world newspapers for all to read. It is pure greed and errogence of Mr. Al Gore & his cohorts that need to melt away from destroying nature from doing what is natural and necessary to this planet. Hope your analysis make the front pages.
Those people in the streets — I’ve met them before (although by now an older version of them) many years ago, at Earth Day celebrations. They were Convinced (and Angry!) — Convinced the earth was going to be destroyed by humans — and human progress — whether by warming or cooling or anything else — CONVINCED — they didn’t need any “science” then, and they don’t care about the “science” now.
It’s their Opinion, so they take it for fact — and demand that you do, too.
They don’t know the difference, and don’t care, between their Opinion and Fact. That’s why Conspiracy Theories are so popular among them, and this is just another one.
And the older ones have been teaching the younger ones — have been teaching them that in the Schools and Universities.
Roger Simon’s impression was right — we ARE back to the Middle Ages.
They’re a Mob — a Universally Popular Mob. It’s much more easy these days than some years ago to get the Mob stampeding for Whatever … whether it’s Muslims rioting over Cartoons — or Leftists rioting over Warming — What-Ever!
Was it in “1984″ or “Brave New World” that the scientists and doctors were considered “Enemies of the People?” Well, here, it’s just a little different — and it’s just the scientists who Don’t follow the Mob who are the Enemies. They are the real scientists — the Fraudulent Warmist Scientists are opportunists who have joined (or are leading) the Mob.
Lee Chard, I have seen “The Singing Revolution” and greatlyrespect what Estonia had done. I have no idea the ethnicity of the man. He told me he was Estonian. I videoed him.
And when I consider that Copenhagen was one of the birthplaces of modern science, I – to quote Holden Caufield – want to puke.
Niels Bohr must be turning over in his grave. At what’s now the Bohr Institute, data and papers were torn apart daily until everyone was convinced that they got that one right (OK, sometimes they didn’t, but they tried).
These were real scientists. And they never held press conferences and waited until the TV cameras showed up. The jerks in Copenhagen are more concerned over where the next buck is coming from than mere integrity and honesty…and it shows.
Acai Optimum,
A diet scam? Seriously?
There is fair amount of ranting and raving around here, so a few more reasoned responses wouldn’t hurt. El Ninos and sunspots contribute significantly: (for all we know, we could be going into a Maunder Minimun cooling scenario, but it will be on top of a warming El Nino scenario) Both ARE important factors, and are included in the statement Hansen has just written for Real Climate:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/12/jim-hansens-opinion/
I don’t think that attempting to minimize our negative impact on the environment is a bad thing. In fact, I think that all this stupid focus on a harmless gas eclipses real environmental issues.
Agreed. However, the real purpose of the (catastrophic) AGW crowd is not minimizing negative impact etc….but something far more sinister, self-serving & political.
And the east Anglia revelations, all of them, from selective use of data to destruction of original data, to shutting out any “peer” who has a different view, have played a role in giving science a substantial black eye (there are, of course, other modern perversions that hide under the banner of science) which I don’t expect to see improved for a very long time.
This is what happens when you lie, distort and dissemble in service to an agenda.
I forgot to mention that Hansen gives examples of two mistakes that his organization made in transcribing temperature data and the corrections they made.
Roger, it’d be interesting to hear you debate Charles Johnson, either in writing or in person.
Hey Roger some here really like the Middle Ages, I’m not sure Jewish folks were that well treated in Europe back then or heretics, women, peasants, free thinkers, pagans or for that matter any that disagreed with the status quo. So here’s to the good old days when ignorance was bliss.
Roger,
Thanks for the expose.
How much ridicule can the Left tolerate? I mean they’re busy busy forging the shackles, and all of our distraught argumentation regarding an ever expanding list of anti-American activities isn’t even a distraction.
I believe many Dems who voted for this healthcare takeover will announce their retirement over the next year, should the polls show them to be even slightly at risk of losing. But in the mean time crap and tax is next up, using the same tactics.
They get to retire?
Yea you’re right it does seem like we’re going right back to the middle ages especially with the whole healthcare takeover.
what I have to say is only that thanx for posting this article